With the release of Shadow of Twilight right around the corner, I wanted to tell y'all about Amelia Smoke, my female lead of Fated Darkness.
Above is a depiction of Amelia and her spirit wolf Rey. Amelia is a werewolf. Rey is her other half. The one who speaks to her in her mind and takes control when they shift into a wolf.
Why werewolves, you might ask? Why not?
I came across an app called Dreame. It's a platform for writers to post their stories they've created. All too often I found stories that were barely legible. Some authors never bothered with proofing, editing, or even reading through their writing before posting online. I found too many stories that I could barely get through the first chapter. But, some were readable, and a handful I did actually enjoy.
It was there I found myself immersed in werewolf culture. I learned about the many different ways a werewolf story could be told. Some went towards the more animalistic werewolves; ones that lived in packs out in the woods, sleeping in dens, and something called knotting. (Trust me, don’t look it up. It’s disturbing and mind-blowing to imagine doing that in human form) While other writers leaned towards a more modern, civilized approach to pack life.
All the while reading these many stories posted on Dreame, I found one annoying, stereotypical flaw. Most of the women were written as weak, abused, and timid females who were claimed by dangerous, bad-boy, dominating Alpha males. There was a lot of wild sex that didn’t quite fit into the plot and major personality flaws that never matched up with the timeline.
A lot of those stories taught me exactly what I did NOT want to write about. Reading over a dozen werewolf stories gave me ideas for my own. Gabriel, Amelia’s mate, was actually the first character I thought of, but Amelia wasn’t far behind.
I knew I wanted Amelia to be strong right off the bat. I wanted her to come across as fierce, over-protective, loyal, and a spit-fire with tons of sass. In all honesty, a lot of her is me. The sarcasm and attitude are all me, LOL. But she’s also everything I’ve ever wanted to be, a strong, powerful woman on the back of a crotch rocket.
I liked the idea of the mate bond, but I also didn’t like how a lot of the stories fantasized it. Like some man was supposed to whisk them away from all of their problems and be their night and shining armor. Life is messier than that and I wanted to show the realism in that. I wanted Amelia to try and fight the instant attraction. To not be okay with just being paired off with some random stranger that destiny told her she HAD to be with. It doesn’t matter if he’s the sexiest man on earth. Being given no choice about your fate is frustrating and the natural reaction should be to fight it.
This is what I believe I did with Amelia. While on some level, she may have ended up giving in to the mate bond, she sure struggles with it the entire time. Does the heart override the mind and vice versa?