Paranormal Romance Blog

Can someone–or something–be too bad to be a hero? That’s the question asked by author Alison Paige, who writes paranormal-themed erotic short stories for Spice Briefs like her new release this month, Raven. Read Alison’s thoughts on the subject (and share your own!) and learn about her demon hero in her guest-post for Harlequin’s Paranormal Romance blog!

by Alison Paige, author of Raven, Medusa’s Folly, and Dark Moon Gathering (Spice Brief eBooks)

As human beings, how great is our capacity to love and forgive? I found myself asking the question, can something, someone, really be too bad to be good—to be loved? Maybe. But I think where the line is drawn depends on your perspective.

That line gets very smudged in my current release RAVEN, an erotic paranormal novella from Harlequin Spice Briefs. Akram is a Leshii demon who must devour souls to survive. He’s captured a beautiful Raven shape-shifter to hunt bodies and souls for him to possess and consume. Sounds bad, right? But that’s what he is. That’s what he must do to survive. He didn’t ask to be the way he is.

Does fighting for one’s survival make one bad, or just alive?

Take vampires for example.  These sexy immortals are the most popular example of creatures who are, or once where, too bad to be good. The undead must kill humans to survive. That pretty much defined vampires when the scary stories and the genuine fear of such creatures first started. But over the years, the “must kill” part of the definition has melted into  “Must kill—but only bad guys,” and in some cases has diluted even further to, “Mustn’t kill humans at all. Only animals.”

The undead are now blockbuster romantic heroes. Teenage girls and mature women alike squeal and giggle at the mention of their favorite dreamy blood sucker. But would they still swoon at tales of a handsome, pale faced immortal stranger if they were the ruthless killers they once were, hunting the easiest victims (the ill and infirm, women and children) to sate their hunger and survive? I wonder.

I think Akram, my demon hero, makes a good point in my Spice Brief, RAVEN. He says he didn’t believe he deserved punishment, any more than the lion that feeds on the young wildebeest or the whale that waits in stealth for the weak seals and penguins to set to sea. Who hasn’t seen those animal documentaries where the pride of lions stalks and kills the cute little new born gazelle, or the Orca whale that lurks in the shallow water waiting for the new little seals to come out to play? Anyone would gasp at seeing vital new life struck down. But the lion and the whale have to eat. And so we forgive them.

Okay, I know vampires and demons aren’t exactly part of the natural order of things, but in the stories we create they become part of the norm for that world. They are what they are, and like the lions and whales, or any powerful predator they must do what is necessary for them to survive. What they must do, drink blood, kill humans, consume souls, are horrific acts. But we, as readers, understand them, forgive them and love them anyway.

So what does it take to make something typically so evil forgivable, even loveable?

Perspective.

When we see the cute little lion cubs meowing in the den for their mother, and the narrator speaks in his warm loving tone about the odds against their survival, our perspective changes. We see the fluffy cubs at play and the narrator tells us that if the mother doesn’t eat, build her strength to produce milk and provide meat for her babies they’ll die. And suddenly we’re rooting for the lioness to succeed in the hunt, to find something, anything, that she can kill in her tired undernourished state to save those cute little cubs.

Perspective.

Now take the heartbroken plantation owner who, in the midst of grieving over the loss of his brother, begs for death himself. Death answers in the form of a vampire. Now he is the monster, but we know how he’s suffered and suffers still over what he must do to survive. We forgive him, even root for him as this bad creature struggles to be good learning to feed only on the “evildoer.”

In my story, RAVEN, Akram fights a similar battle. He requires human souls to survive. But love has transformed him, and for her he would be good. Akram’s “bad” factor is tempered by his Raven, Morrigan, who hunts the bodies and souls she’ll feed to her master.  She chooses the dregs of society—murders, child molesters, serial rapists, etc…those whose death at the hands of a soul eating demon is well earned. Through her goodness, Morrigan performs a kind of bad-ectomy for Akram and in turn makes this hero, once too bad to be good, now too good to be missed.

So what are your thoughts? Who’s your favorite too bad to be good hero? What was it about him that tipped the scales and allowed you to love him anyway?