When Your Favorite MInor Character is Evil

This releases next Tuesday. It's something a tad different from me. You can usually count on me to bring the grim and faintly creepy. Also, body count. Pretty much absent from this book.

It is possible that I attempted a bit of comedy. I'll leave that to you to decide whether or not I succeeded. This book has one of my favorite minor characters of all time - I wasn't supposed to like him. I didn't want to like him. But he is awfully charismatic in a way I hadn't expected. No. I am not talking about the heroine's cat. Of course I adore Archimedes.

In this case, my favorite minor character is Satan. Here's a bit of a scene he has with the heroine.





            Fire surrounded her. Everything, even the rocks, burned. Flames circled the jagged black surface on which she stood. Obsidian stairs rose to a dais and a throne fashioned from burning, still living, still screaming, people.

She looked away.

Hell.

“Welcome to my office.” Satan stood beside her, still in the human form he’d presented in the restaurant. “I see you’re indoctrinated well enough to expect the fire and brimstone motif. Trite but effective.”

Fiona quelled and her gaze ran away from him, too, only to find the damned souls being swarmed by serpents. The snakes buried fangs dripping with poison into the flesh of their victims. The wet, ripping sound reached her above the hiss and crackle of the flames.

“Ah, I see it in your face, the same look I see on the face of each soul who lands at the foot of my throne for the first time. Awareness that settles so rapidly into despair. Don’t make the mistake of thinking Hell is about despair,” the Devil said. His voice crashed down, crushing her beneath derision. “Despair is useless to me. Everyone adapts to it. I am about hope.”

He shifted, peeling back the illusion of civility. Of humanity. His skin reddened to crimson. His eyes turned black. No irises. No pupil. Just the endless depth of evil. He grew horns. A tail. A vicious, razor-toothed smile of triumph split his multi-planed face.

“I am the hope that sucks the marrow from your bones. The hope that shatters souls. I am every futile, dashed dream lying in broken-winged tatters at your feet,” he said, obscene relish in his tone.

Fiona snarled at the towering creature. “You’re the reason my mother couldn’t survive that heart attack?”

His laughter stoked the flames surrounding them higher. Screams shoved her to the ground, cowering with her hands over her ears while her skin charred and crisped. Her shriek mingled with the cries of the damned.

“Do you not pay attention?” he demanded. “No. Your pathetic mother’s death was never in my hands. But that tiny, flickering flame of hope that burned you to the ground before she died, that was me.

“No one resists hope. No one adapts to its lies. Futile hopes bring me more souls than any torment ever devised. Get up, you stupid mortal. You’re cooking alive. It’s against the rules you believe you know so much about.”

 

            A fetid wind, slimy and cold, oozed across her skin. Shuddering, she climbed to her feet. From the way she gulped for breath, from the shattering weariness dogging her, she might as well have climbed Mount Everest.


As you can see, Satan, in this book, has no issue with being bad. He actively enjoys it. He loves twisting everything he can get his hands on. And there's just something about that unabashed love of being evil that's appealing. Yet there's no danger that Satan would get his own book. He can't. Not the way the rules of the world work in this book. So he truly is a minor character who gets a few bits of stage time, and who cannot graduate to being the star of his own show. At least, not until he's ready to go to war with heaven again. And we all know how that ended last time.

An Import of Intrigue: Writing My Favorite Secondary Character

Folks, in a few months my fourth novel, An Import of Intrigue, is coming out.  

I'm very excited for this book, and it was very fun to write, in part because I got to do more with my favorite secondary character in the Constabulary cast, Corrie Welling.

Corrie is Minox's younger sister, and she's just as dedicated to a career in the Maradaine Constabulary as he is.  But she's also still early in her career, and facing a bit of an uphill climb being a woman who actually serves in the streets-- as opposed to taking the clerking desk position that her cousin Nyla works.  So she works the shift she can-- horsepatrol on the night shift.  "Working the dark", as she calls it.

She also swears in ways that would make a sailor blush, at least in terms of Maradaine's own unique forms of profanity.

Corrie really gets to shine in An Import of Intrigue.  In A Murder of Mages, she is mostly just some extra color.  In Import she's elevated to a point-of-view character, she becomes integral to the plot.  

Corrie is, of course, one of the many reasons why I'm thrilled with An Import of Intrigue, and hopefully all the fans of the Constabulary books will be pleased with where their story goes.

Minor Character Favorites

This week we are talking about our favorite minor characters. I'm going to divide this up into two sections: TV & Film, and my books.

TV & Film:

3.) Ernest Borgnine as Cabbie in Escape from New York

He provided lightened a dark plot, created a sense of levity in the dangerous good guy on the inside, and generally classed-up the flick.

2.) Kristian Nairn as Hodor in Game of Thrones

Hodor proves a character does not need words if his actions have great impact.

1.) Pauly Perrette as Abby in NCIS

Abby is fun and wacky in a 'can't guess what she'll do or say next' way that provides a highly interesting side-point to the episodes.

My Books:

3.) Eris Alcmedi 

Excerpt, Arcane Circle, page 331

Eris crouched over her artist and smacked Lance’s cheek with increasing force. Lance looked like he’d barely graduated high school. “Shake it off, bitch boy.” His eyelids fluttered. “There you go, show me those baby blues.” He moaned, then blinked and focused on her. “How many fingers am I holding up?” she asked as she flipped him off.






2.) Xerxadrea Veilleux

Excerpt, Hallowed Circle, page 186

She stamped her staff on the dais floor; it cracked like thunder and the orb atop it began to glow with a white light. “Why have you come?”

“It is my right to attend.” Menessos stopped perhaps ten feet from our contestant line. “Do you yet begrudge me the past, Eldrenne? Will your bitterness never cease?”

They had history between them. Curious.

“You give me no cause for anything but bitterness, Menessos.” She spat his name.

“What benefit could I seek in aggravating the wounds of decades past, Eldrenne?”

“Your motives are ever your own. To guess at them is to relinquish myself to thoughts just as depraved and selfish. I will not sully myself to venture there.”

“Your words sting me, Xerxadrea.”

The other Elders gasped in unison; he’d addressed her by name. WEC had only a handful of Eldrennes and once they became Eldrenne, that was their name in public.

“Good,” she replied. “It may not be the stabbing vehement agony you deserve, but a sting implies pain and if I have hurt you even a little, then I will relish it.”

Menessos took three steps forward, hand out, palms open in a show of nonaggression. “If my pain pleases you, Xerxadrea, if you delight in hearing of it, then come down from your dais, witch. Come down and make me bleed of your own hand, that you may be happy once more.”

Before I could even turn back to her, the Eldrenne glided past me to accept his offer. 



1.) Demeter Alcmedi  / Nana

Excerpt, Shattered Circle, page 305

Demeter stood before him with all the ferocity of a lioness in her eyes. “My granddaughter has been nearly killed how many times since she got involved with you and that vampire?”

Johnny’s chin dropped shamefully.

“Right now she’s stuck in a meditation downstairs. You”—she poked him in the chest—“were here. I bet she saw Menessos tonight, too. He resides an hour away.”

She shuffled a step forward. Johnny eased a step back.

“He is accustomed to the night, and more than normal stress.” She gained another few inches on him, and Johnny retreated again. “He can use magic. He could probably have fixed this . . . but you called me. I had to get my ass out of bed in the middle of the night and come home to fix this.”

Johnny could say nothing. She was right.

Demeter put her hands on her hips. “Hate him if you have to, Johnny. Hate him because he wants her and you feel threatened by that. But trust him, damn it. You three have to trust each other if any of you hope to survive this.”

Top 3 Favorite Minor Characters

My favorite minor characters are...hard to choose. I'm the sort of reader/viewer/consumer who tends to identify more with minors than the majors. For the sake of clarity, I'm defining "minor character" as having a third-tier relationship to the protagonist(s) and/or the plot. Secondary characters get a lot of glory; but we really shouldn't gloss over the amazing third-string who get so little time on page/screen yet have a notable impact on the story.

Because I'm a girl who enjoys making lists here my Top 3 Favorite Minor Characters:

1. The Master of the Young Amelia -- the merchant ship's captain from Dumas's Count of Monte Cristo (the book, not the movie). A man who recognized the genius beneath the filth of the escaped fugitive pretending to be a shipwrecked sailor. The captain was a man of authority who also had the humility to recognize and appreciate that Dantes was a rare gem of an asset to the crew. Yet, the captain didn't abuse Dantes, didn't manipulate or conspire against him, he didn't punish Dantes for seemingly being a better man than he. The captain was one of the few characters in the book about revenge and betrayal, who was a genuinely good guy.

2. Pree -- The club owner/bartender from Syfy's Killjoys (played by actor Thom Allison). Counselor, comic relief, and amazing eyebrows that he uses to great effect, Pree is the guy who when shit's gonna blow, grabs the booze. He owned my heart after that. He was a minor character in Season One, but Season Two Ep1 featured him prominently, so I'm hoping for more screen time for that character. A hat tip to our own Veronica Scott for her interview with Killjoy's show creator Michelle Lovretta. If you haven't tuned into this Sci-Fi bounty hunter series, you're really missing out.

3.  Asta -- the dog from the Thin Man movies. Comedy + mystery + happy couple + mischievous dog = everything I love in a movie. I dare you not to cry, "Asta! Asta!" the next time you see a fox terrier.

My favorite minor character

First, sorry for the late start. Turns out my hard drive on my Imac is toast.
Moving on, trying to pick one minor character I liked best is tough, because I have a lot of novels and  most of them have stupid numbers of characters.

Instead of searching through each and every one of my books to find just the right character, I'm going to go to Mr.Mortimer Slate, an undertaker in my novel in progress BOOMTOWN. He's got all the charm in the world and it does him no good. He is an outcast not only because of his job but because he is an albino of mixed heritage living in a town where money is the only master.

Mr. Slate starts off normally enough, all things considered, but he changes through the course of the novel, becoming something he's not even sure he can describe.

He is also the busiest man in the town, burying body after body and often burying then a second or third time, all while desperately trying to find the supplies to bury them and the land to do so as well.

Poor Slate just wants a simple life, but it's not his place to have it. he shows up in several additional stories of mine, not as the main character but as a companion to my anti-hero Jonathan Crowley. Slate has no choice in the matter, because whatever it is that corrupted him (I ain't telling, but I know) is making him less human and Crowley is deciding whether or not he'll have to kill the man.

Slate shows up as Crowley's companion in "Black Train Blues," "Blank White Page," my novella "The Devoted," and in the chapbook "What Rough Beast," co-authored with Charles R. Rutledge.

Not a bad run for a minor character.

My Favorite Minor Character

In case you missed my very fun interview with Ilana Teitelbaum at the Huffington Post, here's the cover reveal for the next book in The Uncharted Realms, THE EDGE OF THE BLADE! I have such mad love for this cover. Of all my heroines so far, Jepp is the one whose cover comes closest to showing her as she looks in my head. She's also terribly badass, prowling along with her knives.

Love love love.

It's timely, too, because this week's topic is "My Favorite Minor Character." With the recent release of THE PAGES OF THE MIND, you'd think I'd pick Dafne. She's the librarian, who labored in the background of the first three Twelve Kingdoms books - and who proved to be such a popular secondary character that there wasn't any question of who should be the heroine of the next story, once we decided to expand the original trilogy into a spinoff series.

I love writing Dafne - in both THE PAGES OF THE MIND and in the novella that bridges the two series, THE CROWN OF THE QUEEN. But she's not my favorite minor character, mainly because Dafne never felt minor to me. She played a key role in all three princesses lives. She was just in the background because she likes it there.

No, I'd have to pick Jepp as my favorite minor character. She snuck up on me - not surprising, with her stealth skills - first appearing in THE TALON OF THE HAWK (book 3), as one of Ursula's elite guard, the Hawks. I really thought Jepp would be there and gone. As the head scout for the Hawks, she reports on what the long-range scouts have discovered.

Turns out Jepp couldn't be a simple mouthpiece. No - her mouth is WAY too big for that!

She possesses so much fire and spirit that she came vividly to life. Writing her book became a ride in itself. So much so that people expressed shock at times when I made snarky or salacious remarks in real life. I had to apologize, saying, "it's being in Jepp's head so much - the woman has no filter."

Jepp is also very cool in that she's pansexual. She's just lusty in general and finds everyone beautiful. Being in that mindset opened my mind and felt incredibly refreshing. She has no sexual hangup and loves bodies of all varieties, finding something sexy about everyone she meets.

Of course, her enthusiastic sexuality and big mouth get her in all kinds of trouble. Which made digging her out again quite the challenge.

Totally my favorite (once) minor character.

Politics Optional

When two unrelated factions meet, the thing that keeps everyone alive to go home at the end of the day is politics. Unless you're George R. R. Martin.

Case in point: This photo is politics in action. Two felines, both alike in dignity, on the sunny dock, where we lay our scene. (With apologies to Shakespeare) Max (the boy facing the camera) is a neighbor who desperately wants to be accepted by my cats. He is particularly taken with Hatshepsut (foreground). She, being a decade older and wiser than he, has been known to shove him in the water. True story. This moment of détente brought to you by catnip. I'd make a joke about US politics needing some weed, but frankly, I think maybe anti-psychotics are called for at this point.

So there you have it. Do I include politics in my SFF? Absolutely. I contend that it's impossible to avoid

Humans are social animals, which naturally sort themselves into hierarchies as a matter of survival - this is the stuff hardwired into the oldest parts of our brains. When we were still cheetah-snacks wandering the savannahs, the social hierarchy determined who led a group. Who ate first. Who reproduced. Who lived. Who didn't. Jockeying for position within a given social structure is part of being human.

Since Science Fiction is as a genre, one big, open ended 'what comes next?' there's really no way to avoid politics. Which isn't to say that an authors personal political views ought to intrude. They shouldn't, however, I admit that my voice, my experiences and my world view are so colored by my beliefs/thoughts/ideals that I suspect it all bleeds through. If my characters hold political convictions, I want them to belong to those characters, not to me. I'm not writing to make my characters a megaphone for my own views.

That said. I have a fondness for shining light on certain marginalized populations. As a result, many of my characters hold alternative religious views, or are other-abled, or are non-hetero. In all those cases, there are politics surrounding the issues those characters face. And because I'm usually writing romance where HEAs are the expectation, my politics DO slip into the story - I'm going for acceptance and equality. Some days, like today, after more men were killed by police (and I freely admit I will never have the full story on those incidents, but the mounting death toll of young black men in this country is unacceptable) I wonder if inserting politics into writing isn't a duty - a way of saying something, as Elie Wiesel urged - a way of sounding the alarm at enough of a remove that the message of and for compassion slips in beneath a reader's skin and takes root.

I don't know yet how to respond to something that bothers me so deeply about my society. Maybe it requires someone more skilled than I. All I know is that I grew up on the golden-eyed optimism of Star Trek. Apparently, some of that optimism rubbed off on me. Because I do think politics end up in fiction anytime there's more than one character on a page. What I don't know is where the line in the sand lies. At what point does a socially conscious scifi story turn into a morality tale? I'd prefer to stand firmly on SFF side of that equation.

Perils of the Writer: Getting Your Politics into your SFF

I don't usually bring up real-world politics here.  I might be something of a rare bird in this industry, in that I'm on friendly terms with people with vastly varying political leaning.  People who I disagree with, even vehemently.  And don't get me wrong, I do love occasionally getting into it, politically speaking, as long as it's a good argument, and not just yelling, "You're wrong!" back and forth.

Partly, I don't bring up politics because-- especially within political things that cross with SFF writing-- by the time I know something is going on and people are talking about it, someone-- usually Scalzi, Wendig or Hines-- has more or less already said what I feel, and said it better than I would have.  We don't need another white guy going "Oh, me too, because my opinion is important!"  I stay out of it because you don't need me to weigh in on it.  I will if asked, but otherwise, I'll just listen.

However, I mostly don't talk about my personal politics here because it really doesn't reflect on what I write.  Even Way of the Shield, easily my most "political" work, doesn't necessarily reflect any specific political view as "right" or "wrong".  In fact, if any eventual reader does take a specific political message from it, that's more a reflection of their read than my intent.  But if they find something, great.  Subtext is best when it's unintentional.

But some writers aren't like that.  Some wear their politics right on their sleeves, especially in their work.  And that can be great.  Or it can be horrible.*  But I'm kind of the opinion, if you want to write that sort of thing, that's what opinion columns in the newspaper are for.  As fiction, it tends to be uninteresting.

And some wear their politics so proudly, it becomes their public persona.  That's your right, of course, but Freedom of Speech only prevents the government from shutting you up.  It doesn't stop people from thinking you're a jerk.

But let's not confuse politics for behavior.

Because there are plenty of people-- people on the far left and far right, frankly-- who gleefully act like assholes, and then when called on that behavior, use their political affiliation as a shield.  "Oh, you're coming after me because of my beliefs!"  Terms like "witch hunt" are used, because it's easier to hide behind that, make yourself a victim, instead of acknowledging: hey, I'm acting like an asshole.

It's so much easier to act like you're being persecuted.

But if you act like an asshole-- and believe me, I've been there: back in my twenties I'm sure I had some Grade A moments-- people will and should call you on it, and it's disingenuous to say it's because of your politics.  You know why?  Because I know people with the same political lean who aren't assholes, so it's clearly not some sort of obligatory behavior based on political opinion.

I am all for people wearing their politics on their sleeves.  And put it in your fiction.  Have your fiction be a full-on polemic; rip your political opinion off your sleeve and shove it down my throat.  Politics I agree with, politics I don't agree with.  Go full out.

So, without pointing fingers or getting into too many details, here's two things that have stood out to me:

1. I've noticed that the kind of people who are complaining that SF is "getting too political" and "politics shouldn't enter into it" are the very same people who can't seem to make a blog post or Facebook entry without being highly political, including actively attacking people who don't have the same politics.

2. People who complain about having to be "politically correct" tend to be people who want to be jerks.  Let me tell you a secret about "political correctness".  Do you know what it really is?  It's not calling people something they don't want to be called.  That's it.  If doing that is something you've got a real problem with, then you should take a look at yourself and decide what kind of person you want to be.  If the answer is, "I want to be a jerk and piss people off", then fine. Own that shit.  But also own the consequences.  Don't act like you can be that guy and also be surprised that you generate some ire for it.

So that's my main thing: talk the smack, if that's you want to do.  But don't be surprised if it smacks you back.

---
*- For the record, I've read fiction on both sides of the political spectrum that I've found eye-rollingly absurd.