To Villian or Not To Villian...

     ...That is the question! It's not a question of having a villian. Every story needs a villian of some sort, be it another person, mother nature, or maybe the protagonist's own mind. Even a book about overcoming an adversity such as a debilitating disease has a villian - the disease!
     The question today is, should a novel include scenes in the villian's point of view. Specifically, I'm referring to romantic suspense. Some editors prefer manuscripts with only the hero and heroine's point of views. But what about you, as a reader? Do scenes written in the villian's point of view add to the suspense? Or do they give away too many clues?
     In the evolution of She's Mine, I included some scenes in the villian's point of view. Adam, the villian, is a creepy guy. He has a warped view of the world and his place in it. I infused his scenes with all the twisted menace a villian deserves. Adam has set his sights on Caitlin, the heroine, and he's determined to have her no matter what it takes. Here's a sample:

     Adam sat at the edge of the woods, watching. Caitlin thought she was clever, moving earlier than planned. Foolish woman. It didn’t matter when she came back to Naultag, because he’d known all along that she would.

     It irritated him to be stuck here in hiding while she struggled to carry her luggage into the house. He’d do that for her, and so much more. Soon she’d understand his love and she’d come to love him, too.

     He’d failed to convince her that they were meant to be together. If they hadn’t been interrupted he’d have had her. Now she hated the man he’d been that night. She was afraid.
     He could use her fear. 
     He smiled and turned his back, strolling down the woodland path to his parked car. Play his cards right and it shouldn’t take long to make her see that he was her true love.
     “You’re mine, Caitlin.”

      Let me know your opinion. Do you like romantic suspense novels to include scenes in the villian's point of view? Do these scenes give away too much or muddy the waters more (making it harder to figure out who the bad guy is)?

Leave a comment including your email address - use (at) and (dot) for security reasons - and you'll be eligible to win a Dunkin Donuts gift card (or Starbucks, whichever the winner prefers). On April 15th, I'll draw a name at random from all the comments.

Mud Season Is Upon Us!

The snows are melting and the flooding has begun! The road in front of our house is alternately massive puddles or deep wallows of mud. But it's all good, because it means spring is just around the corner!

We live on one of the few dirt roads in town. It's also "technically" a private road, which means only limited amounts of town money can be spent on maintaining/upkeeping the road. The alternative is to pave it but that means widening (and we'd all lose a great deal of our yards). So we put up with the mud in the spring, the dust in the summer and the ice in the winter.




Below is a picture of the pond on Brickyard Road, so named for somewhat obvious reasons. About 200 to 250 years ago, this section of town was involved in the business of making bricks. This pond was once a brick pit - where clay was dug for use in making bricks. Now beavers have moved in, bringing new life to the once almost-still pond. In the spring the water comes within milimeters of overflowing the road.

 



It won't be long before the trees leaf out and flowers start blooming. Then, driving further along Brickyard Road you'll see this green-canopied lane.

A LONG Winter break

I've been terrible about keeping up with this blog. Originally I envisioned doing posts that would show off this region of central Massachusetts. I still hope to do that but getting the pictures for each post is proving challenging.  I thought having both kids in school would give me more time. I forgot to reckon with my "paying" job! Oh well, it'll get done - eventually.


Halloween Fun!



My daughter's creations

 In the meantime, I spent several months contemplating needed revisions for She's Mine and with the help of my wonderful critique partners the story has turned a corner. It was good before, even if I'm biased in saying so, but now it's on the way to being great. I've also spent time since last May doing critiques for those same partners - being just as tough on them as they are on me. LOL! And I'm helping my pastor polish his YA novel ~ can't wait to announce that one when it's published. His daughter is doing some B&W internal illustrations. I'm excited to see her work, too.

 

Fall lingered long





Moonlight in December





A skim of ice on the lake



Like most of the country, we've been having a dousy of a winter here in the northeast. Haven't had this much snow in about 15 years. In fact, we possibly have had more snow this year than in the past 10 combined! Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration. At least we're in the country and have places to push, pile or haul the snow away to...not like NYC. Boy, they just can't handle it down there in the Big Apple. One of my critique partners (and partner in crime!) lives in the NYC area and she's had to put up with it all. I'm grateful to live in the middle of nowhere!

North Street, looking north

Woodland Ave

Tractor comes in handy!

At least the kids have plenty of snow for fun!



I'll try to be more faithful about updating this blog site. We had some interesting things happening over the fall and winter that will make nice articles highlighting life in small town New England. And please - THINK SPRING!

To see how our greenhouses and perennials weather the winter see the photo gallery at the Inishowen Farms website.