Forsaken by the Others Blog Tour!

FORSAKEN BY THE OTHERS BLOG TOUR 

Stop 1: What’s Up With Shia’s Attitude? 

By Jess Haines 

Hello there! Jess Haines here. I’m the author of the H&W Investigations series—urban fantasy novels about Shiarra Waynest, a human private investigator in an alternate, present-day New York. Somehow she keeps getting pulled into supernatural troubles way above her pay grade…

So, now that I’m here, Jessica had a couple of very interesting questions for me. Specifically, how difficult was it to write Shiarra in the beginning, and sometimes still, with her prejudices against the Others?

Let me tackle the first part—how difficult she was to write in the beginning—first. Honestly, not at all. I had been reading so many urban fantasy and paranormal romance novels with heroines who had already grown into their Big Girl Panties that I was getting pretty sick of not finding what I felt would be a realistic representation of how a human would react to being faced with vampires and werewolves. Not to mention that, at the time when I first started the series, a purely human heroine in the genre was extremely hard to find.

Rather than have a heroine who could trade caustic barbs and witty repartee with the monsters while simultaneously kicking their butts, Buffy-style, I wanted to write a normal girl who wanted no part of them but was forced to be in their proximity anyway. I wanted to write something I thought would be more like what would be likely to happen if a vampire really did flash its fangs at someone borderline phobic.

Granted, it doesn’t put Shiarra in a very good light. She’s clearly prejudiced against Others from the start, though as the series progresses, she grows a little more comfortable around them and in her own skin.

Still, give it some thought. An undead creature wanting to suck your blood? Maybe toy with your mind? A furred, fanged monster that might rip your throat out? Those critters might sound sexy when they get all protective, and I suppose some people like the idea of being watched in their sleep, but the reality is that it’s creepy as all get-out if you consider the consequences of getting chummy with a monster.

Put yourself in her shoes. Would you really want to put yourself in the hands of someone you knew you could never fully trust not to hurt you?

Hence my accepting my own challenge to write a character who did not start out as a kick-ass-take-names badass, but is slowly heading in that direction over the course of several books. As the series progresses, it’s actually become more difficult to keep that core of distrust, because her experiences have made her into a person who recognizes and is slowly starting to accept that vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures can be people, too.

She may not be perfect. She may not be the smartest crayon, or the biggest kid on the block. That’s okay. We’ve got enough of those. Shiarra’s learning, accepting, and finding her place in Other society.

I hope you’ll come along for the journey.

Thanks again for having me and the gang over, Jessica! 


For the next stop on the blog tour, be sure to visit the official FORSAKEN BY THE OTHERS blog tour calendar!

You can also visit me on the web:

www.JessHaines.com 
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/JessHainesAuthor
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/Jess_Haines 
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/jesshaines


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