I’ve been writing all my life, and publishing for more than twenty years, but I’m still learning how to write believable villains. It’s all too easy to go off the deep end, to make them so loathsome that they’re boring. Pure evil is just too predictable to be interesting.
When my crit partner Chris read my first attempt at a serious villain, Teodoro Raphael Remorros in my Mayan-themed paranormal Serpent’s Kiss, he commented diplomatically, “He’s a bit of a mustache-twirler, isn’t he?” And Chris was absolutely on target. In version one of the book, Remorros was a cartoon. He oozed cruelty from every pore. No one would trust him for a minute – most certainly not my somewhat cynical heroine Dr. Elena. Despite his magical powers, readers would understand immediately that Remorros didn’t stand a chance of vanquishing Jorge, the hero. And that removed a significant source of suspense and excitement.
Chris taught me that villains need to be ambiguous, with some flash of brilliance or beauty to balance their darkness. Even more important, villains need a reason to be bad. Their evil deeds must make internal sense, given their situation, goals or history. The most memorable villains believe their actions are justified.
In the most compelling stories, the villain in some way mirrors or resembles the hero (or heroine). The two characters have some fundamental traits in common. This sets up a tension, keeping the tale a bit off balance, because there’s always some possibility that the hero or heroine might slip over the line and be lost to the dark side.
Consider Frodo Baggins, the heroic young hobbit in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. His mirror is Gollum, once a hobbit himself, but so corrupted by magic of the one Ring that he has become a vicious and tenacious wraith eaten alive by desire to reclaim that lost talisman. At the climax of that epic, Frodo, who has journeyed and suffered in the quest to destroy the Ring, finds he cannot bring himself to discard it. In fact, the Lord of the Rings saga features multiple reflecting pairs of characters, one “evil” and one “good”.
In The Eyes of Bast, I introduce a female antagonist, a centuries-old sorceress named Delphine Montserrat. She’s malicious and cruel, but has a seductive presence that makes her difficult to resist.
My heroine Shaina Williams appears at first to be an ordinary woman, a compassionate animal lover who falls in love with the feline shape shifter whom Delphine created to be her familiar and her sexual plaything. As Shaina fights for her lover’s freedom, however, it becomes clear that she’s more like Delphine than she’d realized. She’s the heir to her own hereditary magic. And like the sorceress, she’s susceptible to the temptation of power and immortality.
Meanwhile, Delphine reveals her history as a victim of sexual and magical exploitation, a history that poisoned her heart and mind. My goal was to kindle some sympathy for the broken, world-weary witch, to demonstrate how evil begets evil.
I actually feel that Delphine is one of the more effective villains I’ve created. I hope that my readers agree.
The Eyes of Bast
By Lisabet Sarai
Urban Paranormal Erotic Romance
When instinct tells Shaina to visit the feral cat trap she’s set in Central Park, she listens to that inner voice. She discovers she’s caged a magnificent black tom, but the cat inexplicably vanishes after she tends to his wounds. Seeking the missing feline, Shaina encounters instead a handsome stranger whose slightest touch sets her body on fire. As the day dawns after a night of ferocious passion, her mysterious lover is forced back into his true shape—the tomcat she rescued.
Born a cat, Tom was transformed into an unwilling shape shifter by a sorceress who craved a human plaything to satisfy her perverse lusts. Centuries old and irresistibly powerful, Delphine Montserrat will stop at nothing to find her runaway familiar. Shaina vows to do whatever is necessary to defeat the vicious but seductive witch and save the man she believes is her soul mate—even though it might mean losing him forever.
Buy Links
Kinky Literature – https://www.kinkyliterature.com/book/4072-the-eyes-of-bast-/
Amazon US – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4LVYDLH
Amazon UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C4LVYDLH
Smashwords – https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1390042
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Apple Books – https://books.apple.com/us/book/x/id6448929321
Add on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/150375804-the-eyes-of-bast
The Eyes of Bast was previously published by Totally E-Bound. This new edition has been revised and re-edited.
About Lisabet
Lisabet Sarai became addicted to words at an early age. She began reading when she was four. She wrote her first story at five years old and her first poem at seven. Since then, she has written plays, tutorials, scholarly articles, marketing brochures, software specifications, self-help books, press releases, a five-hundred page dissertation, and lots of erotica and erotic romance – over one hundred titles, and counting, in nearly every sub-genre—paranormal, scifi, ménage, BDSM, GLBT, and more. Regardless of the genre, every one of her stories illustrates her motto: Imagination is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
You’ll find information and excerpts from all Lisabet’s books on her website (http://www.lisabetsarai.com/books.html), along with more than fifty free stories and lots more. At her blog Beyond Romance (http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com), she shares her philosophy and her news and hosts lots of other great authors. She’s also on Goodreads, BookBub and Twitter. Join her VIP email list here: https://btn.ymlp.com/xgjjhmhugmgh