Meet the Heroines

First off, I apologize for not getting the blog out last week. The day job is kicking my ass with too much overtime and last weekend would’ve been my husband’s 50th birthday, so I ended up taking the weekend to chill with family and friends for my mental health. But I’m back at it this week. A bit ago, I talked about the main characters for The Monster Within. As much as I love my heroes, it’s time to talk about the ladies.

I love a good, strong female character and this book has two of them. Where would Michel-Leon and Constantin be without our heroines? Régine is Michel-Leon’s right hand, confidant, the person who has kept him grounded since he found himself without a home.

Though rumors have abounded for years that she’s his bastard half-sister, in truth, they are a family by bonds, not blood. Régine lives and breathes the life of a chevalier, yet the attitudes of the era toward women hamper her. Even Michel-Leon struggles with this from time to time, leading to arguments between them. It is a stance that Régine often finds frustrating, especially given that a woman found the Chevaliers de Rouen.

Régine is fiercely protective of Michel-Leon and often the more pragmatic of the two. She gives him a balance he desperately needs when he’s likely to fly off in several directions. She is courageous to a fault and doesn’t hesitate to dive into dangerous situations. This is a trait of the two that often makes Constantin nervous. Her protective nature also rouses her suspicions toward Constantin and his motives. It doesn’t help that Constantin dismisses her initially because of her gender.

Régine grows as well during the book. She forges a role for herself outside of just being Michel-Leon’s second. She even goes on to challenge the villagers to allow their women, who want to help defend their homes, to join the chevaliers as well.

Gabrielle is like Constantine. She’s a fey kissed child, only she’s locked in the nightmare that Constantin once escaped from. She recognizes the magicman is an evil creature that feeds off the children, not the doting grandfather it tries to pass himself off as.

Before he meets Gabrielle and sees the other children at the orphanage, Constantin is ready to run away from the torments of his past. Meeting her changes everything. He can’t leave her in the magicman’s clutches, even if it might cost him his life. She gives him a purpose again and her courage convicts him.

Though she appears waiflike, there’s an inner core of steel in Gabrielle that carries her through her time in the orphanage and eventually gives her the trust to allow Constantin to steal her away. Upon meeting Régine, she discovers women can fight back and she takes to those lessons with a relish that Constantin sometimes finds alarming, even as he recognizes she needs to be able to protect herself. He allows her to dare as much as she can safely do while he struggles with trusting himself enough to provide a stable home for her. In the end, her faith in her Constantin is justified.

Régine and Gabrielle will definitely lead the forefront of the next generation of chevaliers. I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I enjoyed writing them. 

Going Home - And Hitting My Bucket List

View from the Commonwealth Hotel

 So for those of you who follow me you may know that I'm originally from New Hampshire. There's definitely a lot of Maryland gal in me, I've lived here now for 36 years, but my family is from the Great North Woods. I was born in Dover. And I still have a lot of family left up here. Whenever I cross that line past Franconia Notch I feel this incredible peace come over me. I'm home.

My beautiful cousin Sarah was marrying her love Steph this weekend and we were going to have one hell of a party up in Pittsburg. My son couldn't come with me on this venture and though my sisters were coming too I knew I needed some peace and quiet in between the partying. I'm a morning person. They are not. Lol, I also like road trips and side quests so I invited one of my besties to come with me. I knew she wouldn't mind 5 a.m. start times and taking the car and stopping by places for quick hikes.

Statue of Paul Revere

One of the things I knew I wanted to do was catch a game at Fenway. I love the Red Sox. I'm a third generation fan, but I've never, ever been to a game at Fenway. Whenever I go home, I feel guilty for stopping in Boston because I have so much family to see in New Hampshire and Vermont. Lucky for me, my niece goes to school in Boston so I had every excuse to hang out for a few days. So I texted her and asked if she'd be interested in a game. To make it even better, they were playing the Baltimore Orioles. So here I am in Boston, at a game in Fenway lol and I brought I bunch of O's fans with me. It was an amazing game. You could see Fenway from our hotel. It went into the 10th inning and we had great seats. 

Since my friend and I are also nerds and foodies, we had to get some Italian in the North End. We also found an amazing LGBTQ owned BBQ joint that had the most amazing biscuits and homemade jam. We also did a portion of the Freedom Trail. (I'm going to have to go back and finish it.)

Sweetcheeks BBQ

We left for New Hampshire the following day and stopped in Franconia Notch for a little hiking. I dearly wanted to do more, but I'm still working on building up my stamina after getting Long Haul Covid. I can do a 2.5 mile hike, but that was also on lesser climbs so we limited this first one to a mile. In between visiting family and figuring out where in the Great North Woods I'd build my house when I retire up here we also visited Lake Francis, had some ice cream in Moose Alley, went to Beaver Brook Falls and hiked along the stream a bit until a saw a pretty good sized fisher cat and said nope, we're going in the opposite direction. If anyone has read All Bets Are Off they'd know that fisher cats can be real assholes.

Red Sox vs Orioles

The wedding was beautiful. My uncle owns a good part of a mountain in Pittsburg and so we had it in my cousin's back yard. Absolutely gorgeous land. They'd been smoking brisket, chicken, pork and pork belly all week. We ate like kings, danced our feet off, and made the mountain ring with music. If there's one thing my family does well, it's a wedding. 

So I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the break from talking about writing and books. I'll be back next week with more. (There will be more pictures later when I talk hikes LOL.)

Meet the Heroes From The Monster Within

Hello everyone. I’m back after a crazy week of trying to keep my head above water at my day job and spending Saturday at Leonardtown’s first Local Author Book Faire. It was a lot of fun. I bought too many books. And we were chased out early, less by the threatening rain and more from the high winds that caused havoc among the tents. Most of the day was absolutely gorgeous, though.

The last couple of weeks, I talked about the origin of The Monster Within and about one of my monsters. This week I’d like to focus on my heroes, Michel-Leon and Constantin. Later on I will have to include a post about the brave woman and girl who are family to Michel-Leon and Constantin.

Meet Michel-Leon Parisee the Baron de Dagonville and a Chevalier de Rouen. His family has served as chevaliers since 1431. His father preferred the older son, who was more of a warrior, while Michel-Leon was a scholar. The wounds from his relationship with his father and the death of his family in a fire continue to haunt Michel-Leon. He is utterly dedicated to his calling, as Constantin would say, sometime to a frightening degree, but his relationships with his adopted family give him the sense of home he needs to be more balance. He sometimes has a childlike way of looking at the world, full of wonder, and openness to embrace the different.

However, his wounds and dedication have isolated him from opening his heart to another. He has taken a vow to remain single and changing Michel-Leon’s mind is not an easy task.

Constantin Severin is a man haunted by the monster who destroyed his childhood. Fear of the creature keeps him moving from city to city, eking out what living he can. However, when he actually does encounter the magicman again and discovers that it is preying on another group of children, Constantin finds the courage to stand his ground. Using the unusual glamour abilities of the fey kissed, he seeks out any weakness in the magicman. His search also leads him to Michel-Leon in the hopes that a chevalier will aid him or provide him with the weapon he needs.

He is a man jaded and terrified of becoming a monster himself, whose life has become nothing but a bid for survival. Michel-Leon once says of him “You are a marvel who creates marvels, but I fear people have let you down so often you cannot see the wonder in the world.” Despite this, he is a man willing to risk everything to protect those most in need.

It is a rough start for our two heroes who are mistrustful of each other at first, though they are willing enough to work together to achieve their own ends. Though they are attracted, they both resist to various degrees. They do have an ally, though, who is more than willing to speak to both of them to nudge them toward each other. In this scene below, Janvier urges Michel-Leon to really consider the idea of a romance.

“I am not your father,” Janvier replied gently. “I don’t care that he’s a vagabond with no home. Nor do I care that you both are men. I’ve witnessed you engage in conversations with him for hours, and it’s not always about the problems you both face. I care that you both share an interest in things outside of hunting monsters. You can work side by side with him in your lab and you both are content. He’s a man who would plunge into known danger to rescue you and call you out for risking yourself later. You need that. As I believe he needs someone who gives him a sense of home, a reason to return. You can do that for him.” 

Magicmen

 The Monster Within has many villains, monsters, creatures that the characters strive against. It starts with the goblins who are more of a nuisance than bad guys. The swarm is a menace to be sure, and the Boar is another danger, but for me nothing is more monstrous than the magicmen. Creatures who were once human, twisted by their addiction to souls, most particularly, the souls of children.

I cannot claim that the magicmen are creatures of my imagination. They belong wholly to my husband. When he was young, he came up with a group of superheroes he called The Repellers led by a fallen angel to save the world. In high school, he designed a role-playing game around his concept and for four years we battled magicmen, My’riah, Hotep, and black widow sharks amongst many other villains.

My character was an empath who had a particular aversion to magicmen. She developed a sixth sense for when they were around, but oftentimes her companions didn’t believe her until they came to light. She developed a big of a Cassandra complex from it. The magicmen were her nemesis and one even ended up stealing her own daughter.

I don’t remember exactly how I came up with the idea to use them in Monster but Keir loved the thought of me including a creature he created. The fey kissed link was new to this book, but everything else about the magicmen derived from Keir. They’re hard to detect because they tend to lie low. Each magicman feeds differently, and some aren’t quite as evil as Andre Nightingale. Which was often quite a dilemma for my high school character.

When it came to designing this particular magicman, I was greatly influenced by Stephen King’s Storm of the Century. I loved that movie. I loved the horror of the choice the town had to make. I loved the sheriff who kept fighting to keep all the children safe. How he kept searching even after it was too late. (There is definitely a bit of him in Constantin.) And I really loved that bastard who forced that choice on the town.

At first glance, he looked completely normal, that seemingly bland face that held such evil. The way he relished the townspeople’s infighting and pain stuck in my mind. Like Andre Nightingale, he was dangerous when crossed. And Nightingale also enjoyed toying with those around him.

I wanted to connect this particular magicman to French history. So I did some research into French serial killers and came across Gilles de Rais. The fact that he served in the 100 Years’ War with the founder of the Chevaliers de Rouen only cemented my choice. Gilles is not the magicman, but one of his servants who helped with everything and was also executed serves as the base for my monster. I hope he creeps you out as much as he does me.

As a little Easter Egg if you notice when Michel-Leon reaches out to his colleague in Prussia regarding a magicman who had been hunting in Hamelin, that is absolutely a reference to the pied piper.

 

The quote I use above probably sums up Nightingale. He’s arrogant. He’s cruel. And he has zero remorse. The full dialogue for that little bit is here:

“I can crush Constantin’s mind anytime I wish to.” Nightingale’s finger stabbed the air, and then it straightened with a sly smile. “It amuses me to make him suffer. He deserves to suffer after what he has stolen from me.”

“An interesting conceit, considering you stole from him first.” Michel-Leon braced himself on the railing and opened his mind further to the ancestors and their unceasing whispers. Those who had fought such monsters in the past vied for his attention.

“Do you apologize to the lamb when it graces your table?” Nightingale sneered. “The children are prey. Those who should shelter them cast them out, and I take them in. They are unwanted, unloved. If you valued them so much, you’d ensure their care. So spare me the lecture.”

Michel-Leon couldn’t deny the partial truths the magicman threw at him. If it hadn’t been for Constantin, no one would’ve ever noticed the children’s sufferings. There were too many in need of shelter, food, and love. They had to do better.