Going Dark

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the time has come when night and darkness dominate. The weeks between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice have always been my favorite time of year, when night becomes longer than daytime in the decent toward its darkest hours.

This is when my candles come out. I love the warmth of candlelight and the romantic shadows it throws, and although I don’t have a fireplace, I love it when the scent of burning wood begins to carry on the crisp fall air as people who do have fireplaces light their first fires of the season.

Perhaps because of the dying light, scent just seems to become more important. The aromas of apple cider and pumpkin pie and warm, wintry spices entice like few others.

And then there are the creatures of the night. Nothing sends a delightful chill up my spine quite like the supernatural: Vampires and werewolves. Demons and dark Fae. Ghosts and goblins and witches. The dark things in our psyches we’re supposed to be afraid of somehow hold a particular romantic attraction. Maybe it’s the unapologetic power they wield or the fact that they exude a feral sensuality. But give me a dark, dangerous beastie over a stalwart knight in shining armor anytime.
Even better if that dark, dangerous beastie is a little bit tortured, damaged, and misunderstood. Or better still, a tragic hero enchanted under a dark curse.

Because let’s face it: everyone looks good in black.

What’s your favorite thing about the season? Are you, too, a sucker for creatures of the night?

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By the way, if you’re looking for dark, misunderstood heroes—and heroines—I’ve got them in spades:

Belphagor, in my Demons of Elysium series, has secrets he still hasn’t told about his past. He’s hinted at them in the Demons series and its companion series, The House of Arkhangel’sk, but he plays his cards close to the vest.

If you like thieves, gamblers, and rogues, and you love m/m erotica and BDSM, Belphagor’s your man. Er, demon. The first book in the trilogy, Prince of Tricks, is a good place to start:

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In my Looking Glass Gods trilogy…well, where do I start? Pretty much everyone here is tortured and full of secrets, but Ra takes tortured to new depths—and heights. In this dark fantasy, heroes become heroines, heroines become heroes, and mortals become immortals.

The final book in the trilogy, Idol of Glass, comes out at the end of this month and is available for pre-order now at the usual suspects.

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And my first m/f gothic paranormal romance, The Lost Coast, has a classic broody, angsty alpha hero in Lukas Strand.

A dark paranormal romance about fire, wine, and old-growth forests, The Lost Coast is coming in December and is also available now for pre-order.

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Batman: The Dark Hero

Reading comics is one of my favorite past-times. My brother used to work at a comic shop so as a kid, I was exposed to all sorts of amazing stories of super humans facing super problems. But underneath the Kapows! and super villains (which are a wonderful topic to explore as well) are some really interesting human stories and sometimes tragic themes explored by the writers. When you look at superhero origin stories, almost all of the heroes are outcasts, have suffered a horrific event or tragedy, death, mutilation, and/or abandonment by family. Superheroes have to be driven, almost pathologically, to make the sacrifices needed to fight the bad guys, so such drive can only be born from an intense trauma.

One of my favorite superheroes is Batman. His story is pretty well known after multiple re-tellings in movies, cartoons, tv shows, and of course comics. His father was a wealthy philanthropist in Gotham. After leaving a show with his parents, a mugger accosts them and shoots his mother and father in front of him. A new tv show called Gotham is set to air that takes place before Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, when he’s still a young kid. The show includes a young Bruce Wayne, Commissioner Gordon, and some of Batman’s most famous foes before they became criminals.

Batman is truly a hero, but one who struggles as much with the darkness inside him as he does with the good side. I loved the line from the Chris Nolan directed, Batman Begins, when Arthur asks Bruce Wayne why he choose the name Batman. Wayne replied with: “Bats frighten me. It’s time my enemies shared my dread.”

Batman fights crime and pursues justice, but a part of him gets off on scaring the crap out of people and raining his own brand of hellfire down on the bad guys. That’s why the Joker is one of his greatest foes. They mirror each other. “You’re just a freak. Like me!” the Joker says in the Dark Knight.

What else makes Batman the perfect tortured hero?

His tragic past as explained previously.

Even though he fights for a just society, he is at odds with society. The police sometimes see him as more of a menace than a hero, and as Bruce Wayne, he often challenges the board of directors of his company and refuses to act like the good, malleable rich boy.

Darker heroes are obsessed with self-sacrifice to an almost pathological degree. Batman is pathological and obsessed. Probably too much, which is partly what makes him so interesting.

And of course, he’s irresistible to women. Women are drawn to tortured heroes like Batman. They want to be the one to touch the lost and emotionally fragile side of such a man, believing they will be the ones to heal him. Batman has had many romantic entanglements with femme fatales. I find his relationship with Catwoman particularly fascinating. While they often find themselves on opposite sides of the law, they more often than not find themselves on the same side in the bedroom J He’s also gotten together with Talia al Ghul, the daughter of his enemy, Ra’s al Ghul, and even had a son with her in one Batman incarnation.

One of Batman’s writers, Frank Miller, who wrote the seminal, Dark Knight Returns, gave what I consider one of the best interpretations of Batman: Batman is a dionysian figure, a force for anarchy that imposes an individual order. In many ways, I draw upon Batman when writing my tortured heroes, well, except for the Batsuit!

All He Needs is Love

It’s time to cheer for the bad guy…and fall in love with him while we’re at it.

We’ve been romanticizing monsters — traditionally the antagonists and villains of a story — for years now. Vincent from Beauty and the Beast, Lestat and Louis from Interview with a Vampire, Angel and Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Scott from Teen Wolf, and so many more have been romantic heroes in our movies and television shows, bringing monsters out of the dark. Or at least out of the dungeon.

These monsters are a new kind of tortured hero, and often offer us all the ingredients of a classic, Victorian romance hero — brooding, and darkly attractive despite his harshness — but with a paranormal twist. They’re monsters, so they can’t help being a little bit bad. 
And because the idea that the love of the right person can touch the heart of even the darkest hero is so appealing to so many of us, perhaps monstrous heroes are even more compelling. Only the right person will be worthy of the monster’s compassion.

The idea of being so special to your partner that only you can reach through his monstrous facade and touch the human soul beneath is like something straight out of a fairy tale.

All he needs is love.