If you read this blog, you know Monica Kaye appreciates a fine hero. So I thought I’d share some of my inspiration for my dark heroes, written and unwritten.
I love tortured heroes. Dark pasts. Broken hearts. Wounded souls. With honed and burnished bodies, of course, although a few scars are unavoidable, what with the torturing and all.
This picture works for almost all my heroes. And not just because of the chest. I’ve always liked black and white photography. I took a b&w photography class (back in the days of dark room development) and the instructor told us a good print had at least one point of true black and a point of purest white. Sounds like a perfect dark hero, doesn’t it? Black and whites can be so stark, yet so revealing. Just like the best dark heroes. Despite the shadows in a dark hero, you always know exactly what you’re getting: a man...
Oh, sorry, lost my train of thought for a moment. You get a man who doesn’t give up, doesn’t give in, doesn’t give a damn...until he meets you—I mean, the heroine. In the heroine, he meets his match. And by match, I mean the woman who challenges him and who is his other half and who sets him on fire.
Well, those sexy scars had to come from somewhere.
Looking through my stash of eye candy, I found a lot of pix with deep shadows. Not surprising, I guess, since my books are all about shadows. The heroes of my Marked Souls books, SEDUCED BY SHADOWS (Book 1) and FORGED OF SHADOWS (Book 2, out this month) are alpha male warriors possessed by repentant demons. So yeah, they’re shadowed, inside and out.
They walk a sharp line between damnation and redemption and carry sharp blades to ensure they always end up on the right side of that line. If occasionally the line gets a little blurry, that’s just because of all the malignant demon guts on the edge of the blade.
Not that all my pictures are dark. See? This one has all sorts of sunlight behind him.But he still has those wonderful dark locks and dark, dark eyes and OMG actual dark chest hair (but not too much)! Swoon!
But he’s not facing the light. Nope, my dark heroes are resistant to the light. They’re like SPF 101. But love has a way of sneaking through the cracks in their armor. Or maybe just the cracks in their shirts. Dark heroes frequently have unbuttoned shirts.It’s a syndrome or something.
Lighting a dark hero—like properly lighting a photographic subject—can be tricky. A little firelight, or should I say firefight, shows them in action. A little candlelight shows them in a moment of romantic passion. The misty light of the moon gives them mystery while the cold, hard light of day reveals them. Or maybe they show best by flashlight, reading a book under the covers late at night.
All my dark heroes get their day in the sun, of course. That’s what happy endings are for. And speaking of happy endings, doesn’t Liam have a cute butt?
Who is your favorite dark hero and why? Leave a comment and you’ll be entered for a chance to win a copy of Book 1 or Book 2 of the Marked Souls. Not sure which one you want? You can read the opening chapters of both books at http://jessaslade.com
