This week I'll be working on my paranormal chicklit, Dead Men's Nails. I've set this up as a fast paced trilogy. The books will be Kindred Spirit, Arms of Death, and Body and Soul. I have specific things that I need to happen at certain points to make the series work and already my characters are making demands that I will probably give in to.
First I'll share a little bit about my characters.
Faith - tells the story in first person. She is coping with a lot of stress and then she meets a man/being that she finds hard to resist even if he does add to her problems.
Nail - He's not human, has no place in her world, but needs to bask in the light that surrounds Faith.
Jenna - Faith's werewolf bodyguard and friend
Angel - Faith's friend who happens to be half demon
Jason - Jenna's human boyfriend or ex-boyfriend depending on who you ask.
You might notice that everyone on the list above is good guys (more or less). I started this story without bad guys because my good guys were causing enough trouble all on their own. Now I have 60 pages written and badly need bad guys. *sigh* So I started thinking about where they would be be and who they would be interacting with and who might cause the biggest problems for them. Seeing as Faith has people out to kill her I needed to find out who and why.
The why wasn't too hard. Faith is the daughter of the Keeper of Records for the Valafrn Clans. This is a super traditional role and completely inherited through mortals, passed mother to daughter. Faith is next in line. BUT Faith's father is Athair who is Valafrn which is also inherited. So Faith should be a Valafrn werewolf as well as the human Keeper. Both are mutually exclusive. So magically speaking she is trapped in a middle place, with unreliable magic. No one knows if she will have a short mortal life or the longevity of the Valafrn. And many of the most traditional elders believe this goes against all that it means to be Keeper and some of them are willing ot risk the loss of the records to hold onto their traditions. Doesn't make sense but there it is. They want her dead to prove she can die.
The who took some thinking. Kindred Spirit takes place in the summer and I want them to have to deal with uncomfortable heat. I decided on a clan located somewhere hot and tropical, but for this book I want to stick to the US. My location is still slightly up in the air, but the clan will be one that fits into its area. This time it will be the Snake Clan. As if that wasn't going to cause problems enough I wanted the Clan to have some internal troubles. So I have the Snake Clan from Eurasia come to take over a splinter clan called the Cottonmouth Clan. By doing so it leaves a pair of unhappy Alphas that are being forced to follow another pair, which like most alphas, they don't follow well.
The interesting thing is that sometimes while looking for information on one character, I accidentally create another. It just so happened with the Bushmaster. While researching snakes and characteristics, locations and habitats, I came across the Bushmaster pit viper of South America, and I immediately liked him. For good or evil, this guy just took hold and grew almost on his own. The snake is 12 feet of solitary poisonous danger-
So there you have it. Now I have bad guys. Although I still need names for them, I'm not too concerned because I think those will come easy enough. Bad guys will be the leaders of clans, but not all four. Oh and don't forget Melvin.
Shannon
about to write to Institute.
Mmmm, I love to write about bad boys :)
ReplyDeleteGreat post hon!
~Ann Cory :)
This sounds really cool! Good luck! :)
ReplyDeleteWell, the Bushmaster is already causing me problems and if I didn't like him so dang much, I'd be very tempted to kill him off.
ReplyDeleteMy original picture for Lucus ( which is his real name) was a hardened tough guy, more than a little rough around the edges. I wanted him to have survived life's hardships because he's simply too "bad" to give in and die. I pictured this badass as harsh to the eyes but he had other ideas...
As it turns out, Lucus is a babe. As Faith put it on first meeting him... "...gorgeous. Mind-blowingly, stunningly, stop-traffic, and fall-out-of-my-sneakers gorgeous!"
Well there goes Lucus having a weak ego or any chance of him needing more self confidence. *sigh* Maybe I can think up some character flaw that he won't object to so much. If not then I can always have him dealing with a painful neutering in his past...
S
writing to something goofy ->must change channel