Between Darkness and Light

When I set out to write MFoDB I knew immediately that I wanted to approach it in a way that reflected the world that we live in. In a lot of literature there is a lot of conflict between good and evil and, to me, it takes away from the believability of a horror story. Don't get me wrong, I love a good super hero movie and sit in awe of a character who can be fundamentally pure, but in the real world there is rarely a clear line between a good or evil act. It comes down to intent.

In my novel the characters are all deeply flawed, broken individuals who arose from traumatic pasts. How they respond and mature into their present form depends on the influences in their lives, less than on their base character. The characters evolve and may appear to be moving in one direction when they are actually stepping closer to a precipice. One may think that they are acting out of love but may be, essentially, doing all the wrong things for the right reasons.

Writing characters like that is so incredibly dangerous because an author risks alienating the reader. Personally, I have been put off from books or movies over how characters are written like this. There was a movie that came out a few years ago called Splice that immediately comes to mind. There were absolutely no likable characters in the film. There wasn't an anti-hero, just selfish people doing selfish things. There were no acts of good intent, or even malice -- just selfishness for the purpose of self gratification. It made me hate the film. The last thing I want to do is present a cast of characters who act only in their own self interest. The most sympathetic heroes and villains are often those with whom you feel are trying to do the right thing, but completely screwing up in the process.

My characters do exist firmly within the grey area, between darkness and light. I don't think I would want to write a character in any other way. We all have our dark chapters in our psyche, and MFoDB exposes that festering sludge in full display for the reader to experience.