Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

Image by HANSUAN FABREGAS from Pixabay

I have always loved bad boys.

From my early teens, I was always fantasising about good looking but naughty boys. I loved their exciting lives.

I have a long list of favourites, and I’m a loyal fan of all the best bas boys on the screen or in books.

This is probably why I write mystery thrillers, complete with a villain I want to be proud of. To be fair, most of my villains are not very charming, so not quite sure what happened there, but I love them all!

One of my stories deviated from the pattern, as right up until the end I wasn’t sure who the villain was. Writing is a lot of fun, especially if you write mysteries.

Sometimes, creating a villain who reaches for your sympathy is challenging, something I have yet to completely master. Although, I have enough models to study, such as Ray Liotta, Alan Rickman, and Jack Nicholson.

Once, I even had a female villain, and that was fun. This was in Out of Time, and although she had her sights on my detective, David Snow, she did provoke an element of sympathy in the end.

In another of my stories, Silent Payback, I couldn’t decide which character would end up a villain, as there seemed to be two of them.

My current work in progress doesn’t seem to have a villain, not at first glance. I did wonder if one of the warring sisters would turn out to be an unusual villain, but that’s not how it turned out in the end.

When I first started to write, I was always eager to finish the story. Some of my early endings were almost ruined because I rushed them. I have learned a lot since then, and the main lesson was to take my time. Let the story evolve, even when you’re not sure where it’s going.

This works for marketing too, as there are set jobs that must be done in a certain order. If you rush any of them, you will almost certainly have to do it all again later.

Can you tell that I speak from experience?