I’m a huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan.
I mean, total loco, watch one-to-two episodes a day for the last ten
years fanatical. I shiver when I see the
name of one of the writers or producers from the show on new projects: Supernatural or the new Fright Night. I started watching a sci-fi space western—Firefly.
I even started reading comic books for a while—all because Joss
Whedon started writing an X-Men
title.
I love the Buff-ster. Joyce Summers is my favorite TV mom. I had a huge crush on Xander…and for a short
time Willow—I have a thing for redheads, don’t ask. And just saying the name Faith fills me with
fiendish delight.
And then there's Spike…
And Spike…
Oh, Spike...
But my favorite character has to be
Cordelia Chase. She’s funny, straight
forward…so politically incorrect. And
out for number one…until she started fighting the good fight on Angel.
It took half a dozen characters between
the two series to replace what her character pulled off with nothing more than a
supporting role, boiling complex issues down to brutal one-liners. Just look at episode Faith, Hope & Trick
from Buffy season three. “You mean how the only guy who ever liked her
turned into a viscous killer and had to be put down like a dog?”
Or on Angel, season one, in Five by
Five, where she’s talking to a prospective client: “No, it’s not about the
money…Oh, it’s about that much
money? How soon can we meet?” And then later in the next episode, sporting
a ripe shiner, she lets Angel explain why he feels he needs to help Faith
rehabilitate herself. The whole while
she’s having him sign checks payable to her.
She’d decided to take a paid vacation while Angel played
twelve-step-program with the homicidal slayer.
“Like I’m going to stick around here
with psycho-case roaming around downstairs, with three tons of medieval
weaponry? Not!”
Fast forward to 2009. I’d just got another rejection letter saying
that my heroine was, yet again, too wimpy…but they just loved the bitchy best
friend. I get that a lot. I can write a hell of a vicious, funny, man-eating
b-i-t-c-h.
I’d recently read Jennifer Crusie’s The Assassination of Cordelia Chase, a
great article that really limned Cordie’s impact on both series.
Halfway through a bartending shift at a
local resort, a young woman dragged her rather hot, broad shouldered boyfriend
over to get a drink. She was wearing the
tightest, shortest plaid catholic school girl skirt you have ever seen.
To her detriment the thing looked like
hell on her rather plump rump; a fact every woman and cocktail waitress groused
about. But me, I couldn’t get one,
utterly delicious thought out of my head: I wondered what her super hot
boyfriend would look like in that skirt…and nothing else?
Then I wondered what kind of girl could
get a guy to let her dress him up in school-girl drag?
And voila, I could see her, clear as
day, the spitting image of Cordelia Chase…but not.
No, this girl was the star of her own
story. And her name was Lucy Hart.
Right away I wanted Lucy to have Cordelia’s
best traits: a sense of style and entitlement, absolutely no tact, a cool,
calculating intelligence, and a rich daddy.
Then I made her lose everything in a spectacular fashion, and plopped
her six months later flipping burgers at a McDonald’s
.
But I wanted her to pull herself up out of this poverty induced
funk, and to do it in a ruthless, manipulative, utterly Cordelia-esque way. On
top of all that, I wanted Lucy Hart to have her own superpowers, ones that were
all her own, not given to her later on.
So I decided to give her necromancy—the power
over the dead. Just like Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter. I
knew that would gross Lucy out completely.
So I wrote Better off Dead: a Lucy Hart,DEATHDEALER novel, and no one in the publishing world would give it the time of
day. They said it was nicely written,
but that the main character just wasn’t likeable enough. I didn’t want Lucy Hart to be just some
sweet, misunderstood goody-goody. I
wanted her to be in it for herself, to be funny in an inappropriate, honest
way, and to be possessed with self-confidence.
So I moved on to write another book, and
left Lucy how she was. I’d already wrote
up a good outline for the next book, and about seven thousand words of text,
but decided to write something more saleable to get my foot in the publishing
world door.
A couple months ago I read about
Kindle’s self publishing program and simply couldn’t resist publishing Lucy’s
book as I really wanted it. I just knew
somehow, somewhere, there would be others out there that would understand my
new kind of heroine, and love her just as much as I do.
Just the way she is
.
And now there’s a second novel, Not DeadYet, following my favorite gold-digger through her pre-wedding woes: dress
fitting, hell-cat assassin, cake tasting, Sorority-girl vampire assassin,
Walmart shopping trips, axe-wielding hottie assassin, engagement party, witch
and shape-shifter assassins.
Next up?
