While writing my post for IWSG this month about which I preferred writing, the hero or the villain, I opened my own personal can of worms about the characters I love to create. I’m a dark hero kind of gal. No surprise. But all dark makes for a pretty grim pallet. It’s those shades of gray and glimpses of silver linings that make tough guys into heroes.
When I started writing my “House of Terriot” series, featuring heroes who were deadly, damaged and delicious, my four princely brothers where all over the black/white spectrum. Hardened by their horrific upbringing under the brutal rule of their tyrannical/mad father, spoiled by privilege, rank and wealth, having to fight each other for his attention, their place, and often their lives, they could have easily taken the villainous route some of their siblings chose. While clan and honor drove each of the four, those shaded mid-tones shaped each of them very differently.
Nature vs Nurture played an important role as each had a different mother, giving them individual goals, flaws, and needs. The females they chose for their mates molded them into the heroes they’d each become. They’d been character sketched in PRINCE OF SHADOWS and UNLEASHED BY SHADOWS, books in the “By Moonlight” series, following their brother/king Cale Terriot from Lake Tahoe to New Orleans: Turow, the silent, relentless tracker; Colin, the hunky, cynical politician; Rico, frivolous and impulsive; and Kip, the baby of the family, who valued brain over brawn. Taking those broad strokes, what fun I had creating the circumstances, and the heroines, who would shape them into swoon-worthy males – in ways most of them would never have seen coming!
In PRINCE OF HONOR, I gave the painfully shy and fiercely loyal Turow a traitorous bad girl he’d secretly loved since childhood to defend against both her own nature and his family and king, forcing him for the first time to take a stand for himself instead of following the direction of others. Sylvia’s sharp, self-preserving edges and unapologetic passions softened his solid planes, the weaknesses she concealed bringing out his protective instincts.
Colin, the playboy in PRINCE OF POWER, hid his guilt and grief over the deaths of his step-father and brothers and estrangement from the mother who blamed and disowned him behind his wry sarcasm until meeting his match in the love-em-and use-em Mia Guedry, heir to a rival clan, his equal in sexual politics and the drive to compensate for their painful isolation.
In ‘love’ with his brother’s mate, devil-may-care Rico, the PRINCE OF FOOLS, finds himself on the doorstep of a secretive woman with a preteen daughter who tempts him with the vision of love and family he’s never had, their violent past forcing him to step up into the role of hero with a cause. For Amber James, it was love at first smile, but she fears the flighty Terriot prince can’t be counted on to stick around once he discovers her tragic past.
Of all his brothers, only Christopher “Kip” Terriot has the perfect family life (or so he thinks), keeping him grounded and focused on what’s important, until this PRINCE OF DREAMS falls for the female he’s asked to betray. Psychic Ophelia Brady sees a match written in the stars with her handsome prince, but knows he’s just using her to get to her corrupt father. Family both draws them together and pushes them apart when forced to choose which fate to follow.
Struggling with the weight of dark deeds done at the direction of their father, when the four princes take a bold step to stand behind brother Cale when he deposes the terrorizing despot, their search to find a new purpose and a place for themselves uniting their clans and finding their happily-ever-afters isn’t easy, but heroes forged by fire, in my mind, are always the best kind.
The Terriots will return in RISE BY MOONLIGHT, my current WIP, the final book of the 15-book series. You have time to catch up before it’s released later this year!
I like my heroes flavored the way I like my coffee – rich, deep, complex and strong. How about you?
♚♚♚♚♚
Nancy Gideon on the Web
