Flipping The Obvious

When writing, and trying to keep my readers on their toes, and trying also not to take the easy road by making everything that seems like this is the way it should be. Well, sometimes we forget to do this. You have a villain. Maybe this villain has a famous name (Dracula), and you think, "Okay, I'm goign to use him, but I have to make this different."

At least that's what I was telling myself when I got several chapters into my 3rd book and still wasn't sure who my villain was.

But introducing Dracula--or Drakulya--the way that I do in this different world where he is a vampire. That was an obvious choice, of course. But right there and then I still didn't want him to be the cliche.

Flipping the obvious is not hard to do, really. You find something that everyone pretty much accepts as true and you do something totally opposite.

No, Drakulya will be pretty nasty. I wanted a true-to-life sort of character. The fact he is a vampire in this world was not a new idea, but trying to come up with another character who is not as obvious to be the real villain was the way to go.

I also needed Sabrina to have a situation, a mystery to solve, which is finding her cousin Lindee, who has suddenly disappeared. But when she goes to find her in a local park, Sabrina is sucked through a ley line into a new world. Eventually she realizes that LIndee had to have been sucked through to this world, and has no way to come back. Stuck where the only thing humans are used for, Lindee hasn't a chance against the vampires, and Sabrina is the only one who can return her to Earth. But first she has to find her.

Of course Sabrina has to have all sorts of things get in her way before she could solve them. Drakulya being only one such distraction. Drakulya's son, Jett--a psychic vampire--is another one.

Also, in that I'd given her a nifty new dagger was something that I felt She had to have along. Plus, The Dagger of Delphi almost has it's own character, because it acts on its own with no help from her, it will go after a vampire, demon, their minions and manifestations. Because it will kill/maime on its own, Sabrina had to devise some way of keeping it in it sheath, because in this new world, nearly everyone is a vampire. She has a lot of reasons for not wanting the dagger to off every vampire she meets because most of them aren't half bad.

The other problem I came up with was something dark and nasty I named Dreadfuls. They are black cloaked figures that simply stand in a room. When they remain in someones room very long, the person become sick and usually dies. No one knows how to get rid of these Dreadfuls. There is no way to kill them. And they sometimes seem to multiply. Then we discover that Sabrina's dagger goes and stabs one at the death bed of Drakulya's wife and poof! I sort of deflates and it's gone. Which is wildly wonderful. She's a big hero, but she doesn't want everyone having her come to their house to get rid of Dreadfuls. She needs to find Lindee.

I had other thoughts for a few more characters pop into my head last night. So, I'm going to work on these.