Hello, all
you fine fans of this blog! Jonathan Charles Bruce here to do a guest post and
provide you with literal minutes of entertainment!* I’d like to talk about one
of the main drives behind creating one of the protagonists in Improbables: Marley Bennetts the
vampire.
When I
started working on the novel, it was important to me to play with the
expectations of the genre. Typically in paranormal fiction (as you no doubt
know already), the supernatural whatsits that populate the work tend to be
surly loners who must keep their friends and loved ones at arms’ length. If
they live long enough, they’re these weird artifacts of a different time,
living anachronisms that somehow managed to cross their arms and hold their
breath when confronted with the passage of time.
It was that
last bit that really made me want to rework the character. I have training as a
historian, and one of the most baffling things to me is when a long-lived
character remains static. I’m 32 now, and I’m not the same person I was five
years ago. How could a character live one or two or three hundred years and
refuse to budge in their understanding of the way the world works? That’s not
romantic, that’s outright unrealistic.
Said the
man talking about vampires.
In the
prologue, Marley is presented in the moments leading up to her transformation.
She is from a peasant family in the French hinterlands and is saved from death
by another vampire. Early life restricted by illness, her newfound vitality
gives her the opportunity to experience things she never thought open to her.
That joie de vivre infuses her
character and is the most reliable aspect of her personality. In order to fit
into society through the centuries, she has had to learn a multitude of
languages, slip into different roles, and learn the ins and outs of various
cultures.
Living
forever with what amounts to super powers is not without cost, and Marley has
seen much loss throughout her life. However, her extroverted nature sees her
pulled toward others. The majority of her relationships with people are
relatively surface-level, reserving the most effort and dedication to other
improbables. This is very much a survival tactic—she knows that she will
outlive all of her human companions, so she minimizes her investment in them.
When she feels like she’s getting too close, she abandons them and, in some
cases, her entire identity as well, picking up a new name and life where her
whims take her.
Marley,
then, rebukes some of the more traditional expectations of the supernatural in
these novels. She isn’t caught in a time warp, nor is she perpetually angsty.
Moreover, she is well aware of the fact that popular culture has given vampires
a public relations makeover, placing her less as “tool of darkness” and more
“sexy superhero”. While she can be abrasive and set in her ways, she embraces
what makes her human to every extent.
*Minutes of
entertainment not guaranteed; if minimum entertainment threshold is not
reached, please consult your nearest book dealer.
Improbables
Jonathan Charles Bruce
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Booktrope
Date of Publication: February 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5137-0653-5
ASIN: B01BH86AWU
Number of pages: 334
Word Count: 107,360
Cover Artist: Ashley Ruggirello
Book Description:
Abigail Wren’s new life fresh out of college is dull, even with her (almost) dream job at the local newspaper. The only real excitement she can get is found between the pages of an endless stream of paranormal romance novels she can’t help but love.
Then, on a snowy night in December, Abigail catches a glimpse of what could only be described as a werewolf. Enamored with the possibility, her investigation leads her to discover a paranormal population—improbables—harmoniously living in the midst of humanity. Between making eyes at a perpetually grumpy werewolf and hanging out with a vampire with a lust for life (and liquor), Abigail’s life takes a shaky step out of the ordinary and into the fantastic.
Just outside of the sleepy town of Whitewater, however, a force of rage is building. Born of hate and delusion, a living cataclysm threatens to devour everyone in its path—human or improbable.
Excerpt
from Chapter Three:
The
trip back to the office was short and uneventful. Parking her car was also
characteristically nondescript. On her way to the front doors, Abigail realized
that the entire car ride had been on autopilot. Along with that realization
came the panic associated with losing a chunk of one’s precious life to
monotony. And along with that came a sudden worry that she might have flattened
a child without realizing it.
No.
Surely that would have been memorable—right?
Right
in the middle of a panicked mental recap of the events from picking up her book
to arriving in the parking lot, she slammed face-first into a surprisingly warm
wall of a person. She rebounded, only now taking in the red-and-black flannel
shirt she had plowed into. Her hands shot out in an attempt to keep balance. A
moment later, she felt someone’s hands on her forearms.
“Easy
there,” came a gruff voice. Pulling herself out of her daze, Abigail looked up
at the person she had run into, who was now also, kindly enough, keeping her
upright. He was scruffy, a mop of brown hair bleeding into a full (if short)
beard worried with the occasional silver strands. His eyes were an intense
green, which, coupled with the red in his shirt, gave his appearance an
unintentionally festive look. He was pale, but that was nothing out of the
ordinary, considering Abigail had forgotten what the sun looked like in the
weeks she’d been calling the Pacific Northwest home.
He
was cute. In a ruggedly handsome way. Like a grizzled lumberjack.
Perhaps
cute was not the word for it.
Abigail
giggled, suddenly overtaken with the silliness of what just happened. “Thank
you,” she said, certain she was coming across like an idiot. “You can let go
now.” She smiled. The man obliged, returning a tight-lipped smile that seemed
to err on the side of suffering-the-eccentric.
“Sorry.
Didn’t mean to…” he began before clearing his throat, “exist where you wanted
to exist at the same time.” He looked every bit as awkward as she felt, which
made her own discomfort slightly less overbearing.
She
swallowed sheepishly. “It happens.” She suddenly felt the need to clarify what
she meant, so she gestured back and forth between the two of them. “Existing at
the same time and all.” She realized that the gesture didn’t seem to quite work
in the situation, so she let her hand fall at her side as she averted her gaze.
“Try
as we might!” he said with an exaggerated shrug. They exchanged unconvincing laughs
before silence filled the void, mutated into a pause, then sat long enough to
be uncomfortable. While the quiet was maliciously evolving, Abigail couldn’t
help but trace her eyes up the man’s exposed and muscular forearms. When she
caught what she was doing, she wondered where her unintentional partner’s eyes
were glued—no doubt, here was another person in Whitewater who would take any
opportunity to drink in the sight of the newest and blackest resident.
Instead,
she was a little shocked—and pleased—to see he was staring at the ground. He
was legitimately embarrassed for slamming into her. In the city, if someone ran
into you it was either a pickpocketing or just a nonstandard and jostly hello.
In her hometown, it had been met with an impertinent huff and followed by a
subpar apology. Here… well, if this was the first, being bumped into was hardly
the worst way to get to know someone.
Hey,
mountain man Joe, why don’t we walk into each other in front of a coffee shop
some time? she thought. This Whitewater-only pickup line seemed dopey enough to
be charming enough to work—and she couldn’t help snickering at the thought.
“What’s
so funny?” he asked. She looked up at his eyes which had made a momentary
migration to her face.
The
smile from her laughter remained unbroken, but grew a touch larger. “Nothing,
just, uh…” She gestured to her temple. “I’m hilarious up here, trust me.”
He
tilted his head back, enough to give her a full look at what she assumed was
post-embarrassment face-saving stoniness. He nodded. “Sorry again.” And with
that, he brushed aside her, carrying some intense body heat with him, and
walked away. She looked over her shoulder at the man, watching him for a few
seconds. Something registered as odd, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on
it.
Regardless
of what it was that presently pricked at her brain, she shook it off. She had
spent weeks feeling exasperated when people felt they were privileged enough to
stare at her like a lab specimen; she wasn’t too keen on forcing that behavior
on someone else.
No
matter how green his stupid sexy eyes were.
She
turned around to the glass doors and jolted at the sight of Lacy Renault, the
woman in charge of business coverage. A tiny woman in her fifties with
short-cropped silver hair, she watched Abigail come in with icy blue eyes and a
gotcha-smile. She wore an immaculately tailored red business suit, giving her
the appearance of a circa 2008 female presidential candidate.
Abigail
stepped into the vestibule, grateful for the limited respite it provided from
the elements. “Were you watching that the whole time?” she asked, trying not to
look too confused by Lacy’s grin. The expression was becoming a bit too knowing
for her tastes.
“You
running into Collins?” She asked. She opened her eyes widely, teasingly, and
nodded. “Oh, my, yes!”
Abigail
shrugged. “Something I should know?”
Lacy
gave an embellished frown. “No, no. Just, uh…” She trailed off in the way
people do when overstressing a manufactured difficulty with words. “Glad to see
you’re taking in the sights.”
Well,
this conversation immediately failed the Bechdel Test, Abigail thought icily.
About the Author:
Jonathan Bruce began writing what amounted to terrible Star Trek: The Next Generation fan fiction when he was four… provided that you accept that “forcing other people to write what he said” is the same thing as “writing”. Although the original manuscripts are lost (or perhaps destroyed), we can rest assured that his prose has improved significantly since then. After high school, he began writing and directing plays which gradually improved depending on whom you ask. He discovered his love of a good fight scene after writing a Dracula knock-off which took a 19th century classic and made it less about Victorian yearning and 300% more about stabbing things in the jugular.
He has a Master’s Degree in History, thanks largely to his thesis focusing on MUSIC, a Milwaukee-based school desegregation campaign during the 1960’s. He also enjoys discussing/making fun of pop culture of the 20th century and reading books of a non-historical nature. In his off moments, you can catch him writing for fun or making inane movies about nothing in particular.
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1 comment:
Thank you so much for hosting! I appreciate letting me talk a little bit about my characters! :D
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