As an intro to the world that I've been spending quite a bit
of time in, vampires and demons fought a war that ended eight hundred years
ago. They are still largely enemies and BLOOD FEUD is the beginning of trying
to heal that breach.
The demon slayers come in with the second story, DEMON
KISSED. The slayers recruit specific people to their ranks, and while there's
not outward tie, they are run by the same group that gives orders to the
vampire hunters. They make their first appearance in SHADOW'S CARESS.
Each of the stories can have a hero or heroine from any
group. Same thing with the villains—they can be anyone or anything. I like the
ambiguity because real life has plenty of it.
ENEMY EMBRACE introduces the wizards and not necessarily in
a good way. In this story, we find out that the wizards are out for themselves
first, last, and always. They're not the villain in this piece, but it
introduces another group with ambiguous aims.
The story I'm writing now in the world? The h/h are both
wizards. Also, two of the other stories I have under submission involve wizards
as well, but it's really the story I'm working on now that gets into the
problems in their world.
One of the other things I like about the ambiguity in bad
and good is that each hero and heroine, depending on which group they belong
to, has their own viewpoint about the other groups. It also shows the
characters by spotlighting what interests them or what they observe in the
world.
What I mean by this is that different h/h don't think
about or even mention some of the groups because they're just not a blip on
their radar screen. In BLOOD FEUD, the slayers and hunters aren't part of the
equation that the h/h are dealing with so they don't worry about them. Their
focus is on the demon who's killing the vampires and preventing another war
from erupting. Same with the other books. The h/h's voice and
viewpoint drives what comes out and who they think about and that's the way it
should be if a writer is being true to who their characters are, IMO.
Characters
don't think things like: Hey, I'm hunting the evil murdering demon, but
let me wax poetic about the wizards even though they're not in this
story and have no bearing on it. That's totally cheating character
viewpoint. Again, this is IMO and I'm sure there are writers that
disagree with me, but if Point of View is being done correctly, the
writer shouldn't be interjecting herself or what she thinks the readers
need to know about the world. It should flow naturally from the
characters.
