Greetings and salutations! First of all, I want to say thanks to Elie for having me on the blog today. Thanks so much, Elie!
So today, Elie asked me to talk a little bit about the rules that my heroine Gin Blanco follows in my Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series. For those of you not familiar with them, the books focus on Gin Blanco, an assassin code named the Spider who can control the elements of Ice and Stone. When she’s not busy killing people and righting wrongs, Gin runs a barbecue restaurant called the Pork Pit in the fictional Southern metropolis of Ashland. The city is also home to giants, dwarves, vampires, and elementals Air, Fire, Ice, and Stone.
Books in the series are Spider’s Bite, Web of Lies, and Venom. Tangled Threads, the fourth book, was published on April 26, while Spider’s Revenge, the fifth book, will be released in October.
Now, Gin is an assassin, but even she has rules that she follows – a code of conduct, if you will. Gin’s rules are pretty simple. She doesn’t kill kids or pets, and she doesn’t frame other people for the murders that she commits. But if an innocent person or someone that she loves is being threatened, well, Gin is more than ready to pull out her silverstone knives and solve the problem in the bloody, permanent fashion that she’s so very good at. Think of her as an assassin with a heart of gold – or something like that. LOL.
So why did I give Gin these rules to follow? Well, I knew that it would be somewhat difficult to write an assassin character and have her be the heroine and have folks actually like and even root for her. So that’s why I gave Gin her own sort of moral code and lines that even she won’t cross. I think with any sort of antihero character – assassins, thieves, spies, etc. – that you have to give them rules and reasons for doing the things that they do and you have to set boundaries for them.
To go along with the rules, I put Gin in my fictional city of Ashland – a dark, gritty, violent, corrupt place. Ashland is the kind of city where it’s survival of the fittest, and Gin being an assassin blends in with the rest of my world building. Gin witnessed the death of her mother and older sister and was forced to live on the streets. She became the assassin the Spider more to survive than anything else – and now, she’s all grown up and looking for revenge against the person who murdered her family.
But even though she’s bent on revenge, Gin isn’t going to forget her rules. For example, in Tangled Threads, the latest book in the series, Gin searches for a kidnapped girl and puts her life on the line to save the girl’s – even though it would have been easier for Gin to not even search for the girl in the first place.
But that’s the kind of heroine Gin is – tough and cranky on the outside and a bit of a softie on the inside, whether she wants to admit it or not. Hopefully, readers will enjoy seeing how Gin reconciles her rules with taking down the bad guys in Tangled Threads and the rest of the books in the series. Fingers crossed, anyway. ;-)
What about you guys? Do you like rules when it comes to antiheroes? Why or why not?
Jennifer also writes the Mythos Academy young adult urban fantasy series for Kensington. The books focus on Gwen Frost, a 17-year-old Gypsy girl who has the gift of psychometry, or the ability to know an object’s history just by touching it. After a serious freak-out with her magic, Gwen is shipped off to Mythos Academy, a school for the descendants of ancient warriors like Spartans, Valkyries, Amazons, and more.
The first book, Touch of Frost, will be out in August, while the second book, Kiss of Frost, will hit shelves in December. First Frost, a prequel e-story to the series, will be out in July. Visit
http://www.jenniferestep.com/ for excerpts and more.
Thanks Jennifer. This is a very exciting year for you!
Jennifer is kind enough to offer a copy of Tangled Threads to a lucky reader in the US or Canada. To enter...answer Jennifer's question in the comments below. Giveaway ends May 21st.
What about you guys? Do you like rules when it comes to antiheroes? Why or why not?
