Did I mention CROSSED is out?
So... CROSSED: A Void City Novel came out January 25th.
And finally readers get to see Eric on the cover. Well, okay.. .not really, but to be honest, Greta is the next best thing. She is hands down the scariest character in my series and she's (technically) one of the "good guys".
My previous novels have always been written from the points of view of Eric (my angry, forgetful, potty-mouthed anti-hero) and Tabitha (his most recent vampiric creation and on again off again girlfriend), but in this one readers actually get a taste of Greta's POV. And I'm hoping they dig it.
You see, one of the scariest lines of dialogue in my first novel (Staked) came not from Eric, but from his daughter, Greta:
“Don’t worry, Daddy; I’ll kill them for you.”
Eric is faced with the idea of possibly having to kill an entire werewolf pack to resolve an inconvenient case of they-all-want-to-kill-him-itis, but recoils at the thought of possibly killing the cubs, because Eric absolutely won’t hurt children- not even werewolf children. Greta has no such compunctions. Heck, if she’s not careful, she refers to humans as “foods”. And that’s one of the things that make her so much fun to write. In a genre full of vampires who want to play nice or kill other vampires for altruistic reasons, Greta is just frick’n hungry all the time… and unless “Dad” has ordered her specificallynot to eat them, anyone might be fair game. She’s glad to spare “Daddy” the pain of killing… perhaps a little too glad.
Although she didn’t make the cover until Crossed, Greta is a character whose role has grown increasingly from book to book, from the moment she showed up in Chapter 19 of STAKED with her always honest commentary about Rachel (“She’s certainly… um, pierced isn’t she?”) to her gleeful approach to combat (“Bad dog!” she admonished. “No biscuit!” Greta caught the werewolf by his muzzle, snapping his jaws shut with a pop and giggling when he whined. “Can I keep him, Dad?”), to her painful (for the other character) encounter with Tabitha, Eric’s vampiric romantic interest in ReVamped:
My (Tabitha’s) fingernails stretched into claws. “Is that a threat?”
“No,” Greta vanished. The floor rose up to hit me in the face, bloodying my nose, bringing tears of blood to my eyes. Her weight was heavy on my back, grinding me into the cold tiles. Fangs touched my neck and my arms bent backward, broken at the elbows. “This is.” She knelt in front of me, head canted at a curious angle. “Hurt my daddy and I’ll kill you.”
Greta’s is a point of view I’ve been dying to let the reader’s see. Don’t get me wrong, Eric is at the heart of the story, but in a very real way, Greta is also at the heart of Eric.
Greta is the one being Eric seems to openly love in a true father/daughter kind of way. Though Eric has referred to himself as “all bull, no china shop”, his scenes with Greta make a liar of him. One of the coolest things about writing CROSSED (which really really really is out in stores today) was being able to have Greta spend a chapter showing the reader how she first met Eric (she was nine, though he refused to turn her into a vampire until she turned twenty-one) and why, as result, her actions aren’t actually mindless or crazy. They make a very deadly, funny, and (okay, sometimes) sad sort of logic. What does being raised by a vampire from age nine to twenty-one do to a person? Well… Greta is one possible outcome. In CROSSED, everyone finally gets to see what’s been hiding behind those clear blue eyes.
Of course, if you haven’t read STAKED and ReVAMPED, you should read those too, but CROSSED is where Greta finally gets her own bit of the spotlight. And if you want a free sample, you can check out what happened when she and Eric tried to go trick or treating this past Halloween (one section of which was even here on the League blog) in a blog-jumping free short story. I have a “Table of Contents” with a guide to all the parts on my own blog here: http://writethefantastic.blogspot.com/2010/10/void-city-halloween-trick-or-treat.html
Comments
Crossed is incredible - funny, smart, a great story line, and thoroughly entertaining! It's my favorite of the Void City books and I think it's because of Greta's POV. She is scary and funny and at points completely terrifying! She's brilliantly written.
I think what makes the books so great is the affection you have for your characters. I like them all (including Rachel, which is saying something because she's thoroughly evil).
All I can say - to everyone out there - is get out and buy Crossed! And if you haven't read the other books in the series - what the hell is the matter with you? Buy them, too. Its a unique series worth owning.
And please tell me there will be more books coming....
:)