Am I Being Too Mean to My Villains?

About two months ago, I handed the fifth-draft copy of the upcoming Faerietales Book 4: Wing and Dagger to a certain influential individual in my life, figuring she could have fun reading it while I waited for my way-too-savvy editor to savage the thing.

Since the person in question is the whole reason why I wrote another installment in the series, I figured she’d be happy. And she was.

I think?

The reason why I’m not so sure is because she talked less about the aspects she liked and more about how, in the first three chapters, I’d been so mean to two particular characters.

Out of all of the possible criticisms I could have gotten, I never saw that one coming. Which was probably stupid considering her past reactions to how I’ve treated previous villains.

Yup, I said villains. The two characters she was upset about are bad guys. Unrepentant ones too. Martin was in Not So Human, where he pushed Sabrina to her literal snapping point, and Ryan was a manipulative little liar who tried to mess with her head in To Err Is Faerie.

Neither of them were main antagonists. But they certainly weren’t nice or good or likable.

Which means I don’t understand feeling bad for them. I didn’t throw them to crocodiles (which, admittedly, they don’t have in Scotland). I didn’t even have anyone beat them up, which they would have deserved considering how they’re still willingly employed by the HPAC.

All I did was make them think Sabrina was going to kill them. And in the creative world, that’s low-key. Practically chick-lit material, really.

If you want “mean,” how about having your protagonist track down his wife and daughter’s killers, inject them with paralyzing drugs and then saw them into pieces while they’re still alive?

I’m not making that up. I actually hope I couldn’t make it up, since it’s a level of disgusting I don’t care to dwell on.

(Never watch a movie just because it has a pretty face and form in it. Even Gerard Butler might not be able to make up for the rest of what you’re in for.)

I also can’t stand burning characters – villains or otherwise – or permanently disfiguring them in any other way, shape or form. If you want that kind of stuff, go read or watch Game of Thrones.

All of this is to say that I do think you can be too mean to your villains. However, I don’t think I crossed that line.

If I ever have, Ii can guarantee it’s my heroes who’ve suffer the worst. 

President Obama Isn’t a Reptilian but Faeries Do Exist

Did you know President Barack Obama is an alien intent on subjugating the human race?

 

If you’re a liberal, hold the hate comments… Because so is former President George W. Bush. And British Prime Minister David Cameron. And Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie.

Actually, the same can be said of most powerful people throughout the ages, be they politicians or entertainers.

Think I’m insane yet? Well, I’m not. I’m just repeating what actual crazy people believe.

Crazy people like David Icke, a conspiracy theorist who says the planet is controlled by “reptilians,” shape-shifting aliens bent on global domination.

Oh yeah, and they like to drink our blood.

I learned about this from an ex (not the British one), who liked researching conspiracy theories. When he told me about reptilians, I thought it was hysterically entertaining to the point where I probably went a little overboard learning more.

My love affair with such ridiculousness ended abruptly after I discovered that David Icke based it all on a supposed vision he had. Greatly disappointed with what I deemed a total lack of imagination, I dropped the subject altogether.

Until I got 144 pages into Farietales Book #4 (which still doesn’t have a name).

No, Sabrina and her fellow faeries don’t co-exist with reptilians. Nor do they believe in them. I came up with a much cleverer, more logical and – dare I say – amusing way of incorporating the supposedly scaly, sinister aliens. And I grinned the whole entire way through.

I’m smirking right now just thinking about it. With the hope that you smirk too, here’s a snippet from the rough draft. I’m really hoping it makes the final cut…

(My most sincere thanks to my ex for providing me with such entertaining fodder!)

Five HPAC employees and two Scottish faeries were dead after the joint raid they’d conducted on Katharine’s house. So were twelve perpetrators. The firefight had been intense enough to alert the authorities upstairs, yet brief enough to maintain the anonymity of everyone involved. The only thing the cops found when they arrived was a fight scene with no fighters anywhere. Kenneth and Sabrina’s forces, along with the HPAC team, had extracted everyone, even the corpses.

International tabloids were already running their takes on what had happened, and conspiracy theories were running wild, though none of them mentioned faeries.

Alien abductions were high on the list. British conspiracy theorist David Icke’s group was going nuts about it. Those people had long-since claimed that reptilians – also known as reptoids, reptiloids, saurians or draconians – were out there X-files style. Though the aliens in question were significantly larger than the average human in their real forms, they were also shape-shifters, capable of looking like whatever average man or woman they wanted to.

Except, with that kind of power, who would want to be average? Certainly not the reptilians, who had a long history of messing with earthling governments. Strangely both political and apolitical at the same time, David Icke managed to both delight and irritate almost every political group ever. Because according to him and his followers, George W. Bush was an evil alien. As was Barack Obama. The same went for the UK’s Tony Blair and David Cameron, Germany’s Angela Merkel and the highest factions of Hollywood. Just about anyone with any iota of power throughout the ages was an extraterrestrial with a taste for human flesh.

Sabrina had learned about the group years ago thanks to a former boyfriend with an enormous IQ and matching nerd proclivities that had him reading anything and everything sci-fi related. It seemed to be her type, she supposed, which was working to her advantage now.

Justin Hills hadn’t actually believed in reptilians; he just liked researching them and other conspiracy theories. Since she’d found them fascinating as well, she’d listened with delight to his explanations about the cult, doing her own investigations on the side. As a result, she found the tabloid material exceptionally diverting.

Being a former newscaster himself, David Icke knew how to milk attention from any story presented to him. So he claimed to have video footage of reptilians sneaking away from the premises, holding onto limp human bodies. As expected, the documentation wasn’t high-quality, but the conclusion was solid nonetheless: The victims were headed for the dinner table.

Faerietales 4: Because Trilogies Are So Cliché

At the beginning of the month, I mentioned how I’d started another story despite my plans to work on completely different novels.

So here’s the big reveal now that  I've officially published Faerietales 3 (available on Amazon.com in both print and Kindle copies)... I’m working on Faerietales Book 4.

It had to happen, I suppose, considering all the questions I left unanswered at the end of the appropriately named “Up in the Air.”

It’s not a cliff-hanger ending. Don’t worry, guys. I had originally intended this to be the last Sabrina-focused book, and so I gave her a promising new future. But it did still end in such a way that left a whole lot of room for a whole new story.

At least that’s what a certain lovely, lovable, obnoxious someone I know told me after reading Book 3. And I guess I caved to the pressure.

Nah… That’s not being fair to her. If anything, she got my imagination fired up. That’s it. The rest is all my fault.

So here I am, typing away, reusing memorable tertiary characters from “Not So Human” and “To Err Is Faerie” that I never thought I’d write about again. Oh yeah, and I’m introducing a new character based on one of the greatest emotional con-artists I’ve ever personally met.

Unexpected though it is, it’s totally fun!

Don’t ask me what the title is, because I’ve got nothing right now. But I do have a good grasp of where the plot is going. And let me tell you… It’s going to rock! As is Sabrina. No more scarred little faerie… This princess is ready to rule.

Since I’m still in the early stages of writing, don’t expect this baby to fly free until next year. But here are a few elements I may or may not have already written into existence:

·         There may or may not be a wedding involved.

·         There may or may not be a faerie plot to kill humans for a change.

·         And Sabrina may or may not have to work hand in hand with the HPAC at some point.

I wish I could say more, but I really can’t. For one thing, it would be giving away too much of the recently-debuted “Up in the Air,” which is now available on Amazon.com in both Kindle and print copies.

But also, I don’t like locking myself into anything. I reserve the right to go back and edit out anything I want to until I push that “publish” button.

In the meantime, feel free to post any suggested titles in the comments below. I’ll take all the help I can get!