Welcome J.P. Barnaby who's here today talking villains and what makes them memorable! Be sure to check out her newest release from Dreamspinner Press, Saving Hannah, a second chance romance below too!
Contemporary romance novels don’t generally have villains. In most of these stories, the main characters have interpersonal conflicts or situations that don’t involve the interference of a bad guy. So, when I started writing my current work-in-progress, IVAN, I had a great challenge. I wanted to develop a frightening villain the reader could engage with, someone the reader could root against. He needs to be well-rounded with both good and bad traits, complex, and have not only a compelling backstory, but someone who cares about him. He needs a strong antagonistic relationship with the main character and he needs to be someone who can’t be defeated.
That’s actually much harder than it sounds.
So, after I figured out the relationship between the protagonist and his villain, I investigated the villain’s emotional wound. What caused him to behave the way he behaves? What drives his goals? What event in his history damaged him to the point where he’s willing to kill to get what he wants? I went through the Emotional Wound Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. I matched the behavioral traits I wanted him to have to play off the protagonist to a wound and then worked forward to weave that into the novel. Putting those details together in a cohesive way has been a lot of fun as part of my move into Romantic Suspense.
Want to see what I mean?
The rage set his skin aflame. His fingers were tinder under its heat. He wanted to stab his own ears so it would stop because he couldn’t make himself turn it off. Tiny sounds came through the headphones, sweet cries that made his cock throb in his hand. He wanted to be the cause of those sounds. Instead, he turned the sound up to catch every quickened breath. He could even hear the slap of skin as the unseen hand jerked over an unseen cock. It wouldn’t be long now, sounds came faster and harder, his breath almost a pant. The word fuck repeated over and over through an inadequate mic until that holy grunt of pleasure signaling a hard release. He released too, sticky and slimy over his hand as he sat alone in the cavernous room with its industrial tile and dropped ceiling.
He pulled the headphones off with his clean hand. Richard would be falling asleep right about now. That was the routine, every night. Sometimes he had a drink first, sometimes he called his sister first, sometimes he jacked off first, but he was always in bed by ten o’clock. It was somewhat of a ritual they went through together, seven point three miles apart through a listening device only he knew about.
He’d been in love with Doctor Richard since the moment he’d walked into the conference room after that psycho Sikes shot up their building. Richard walked in, distinguished even in a golf shirt and khakis, tall and lean. It was the only time he’d ever seen Richard dressed down. Maybe he’d done it to make the sheep at <Ivan company> feel more comfortable. He’d certainly felt comfortable. He’d sat across the table from a beautiful man and told him things he’d never told anyone else. They had a connection. He felt it. Richard felt it too. He’d seen Richard want to reach for his hand so many times, but stop himself. God, he wished for that so hard in the dead of night when he sat alone in this place.
There were so many times he’d wanted to call Richard, to see him again, but their counseling sessions were just a short-term thing to get employees “through the trauma”. How do you get through the trauma of watching bodies fall around you? How do you get through kneeling in blood? How do you get through losing the one man you loved because it was time for him to move on to the next pathetic soul and try to help them? Because that’s the kind of man Richard was—a selfless gift.
Richard snored softly when he put the headphones back to one ear. He’d sleep through the night, he always did. So, there was nothing to do but start getting ready for the next phase. For months, he’d lingered in the background gathering intelligence, but soon he’d make his move.
Soon, Richard Malone would be his.
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Thomas Aberthol’s luck has run out. His daughter, Hannah, needs a miracle he can’t deliver. A hacker with a felony record, Thomas has little chance of finding work that will provide the care she needs. Out of money, out of options, and out of hope, he throws himself on the mercy of someone he never thought to see again.
Even after ten years, Aleksander Sanna still dreams of that drunken kiss. A perfect moment in time when Thomas wanted him. In his world of elegant code and high finance, the picture he holds of Thomas torments him in the dark of night.
Their worlds collide as Thomas interviews for the job he so desperately needs with the company Aleks inherited from his father. Thomas doesn’t get the position, but Aleks offers him a completely different kind of proposal, one suited to Thomas’s unique talents… one that will change the course of both their lives.
Read an excerpt at: https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/saving-hannah-by-jp-barnaby-10051-b
JP Barnaby is an award-winning contemporary romance and romantic suspense novelist with over a dozen novels. Her heart and soul, the Survivor Series, has been heralded by USA Today as one of their favorites. She recently moved from Chicago to Atlanta to appease her Camaro (Jake) who didn’t like the blustery winters. JP specializes in recovery romance but slips in a few erotic or comedic stories to spice things up. When she’s not working on her latest novel, she binge watches superheroes and crime dramas on Netflix with her husband and Jack Russell Terror, Chase.
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