Guest Post - Deborah White (Author of Wickedness)

Character profiles from Wickedness

Nicholas Robert Benedict…powerful, charismatic, dangerous, self-deluded and damaged. I think that sums him up! Damaged because he was an orphan brought up in a religious seminary and treated with inhumanity. (That’s why he hates conventional religion.) Deluded and dangerous because he does believe he will use the power of the spells for good. Powerful and charismatic because of the spells…but also because of the seductive complexity of his character. Is he totally wicked? Doesn’t he have a point when he asks why any God would allow suffering and inhumanity to exist in the world? And yes he is dark, brooding and handsome, but as Margrat admits…it is his mind that she finds erotic…and I know how she feels!
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Margrat Jennet

How was her character formed? Some bits were easy…she had to have red hair obviously. And I needed her to be an only child with very little family. She had to be literate…and so her father has a bookshop and she helps him. And yes she lives in the 17th century, but she has all the normal emotions any fourteen year old would recognize. Getting angry with your parents. Wanting ‘stuff’…she has money and she’s going to spend it! And, when she meets Nicholas, experiencing overwhelming sexual attraction for the first time…and finding it’s pretty uncontrollable.
And while I wanted her character to be fairly strong on the surface…I needed her to be, unlike Claire, a little bit fragile and vulnerable too. Is she a survivor?
Please note, the picture is of Deborah and not Margrat
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Claire
Outwardly physically similar to Margrat, but emotionally much more robust. And she comes from a fractured family…her dad has left home. She finds her mum difficult and her sister irritating…but she does love them. Nevertheless she feels isolated, listless and disaffected…they’ve moved to her dead Grandmother’s house in an unfamiliar part of London and none of her friends are nearby. She thinks of herself as lacking ‘courage’, but the reader can see she has loads of it. And yes she makes plenty of mistakes…but she learns plenty about life from them and you know she’ll be one of life’s survivors.
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Christophe
He had to act as a counterpoint to Nicholas. So he’s everything Nicholas isn’t. So he has a strong physical presence…but not in that devastatingly erotic way. He’s bright…but his mind doesn’t have that seductive edge. He’s open and honest and kind. He has a strong sense of himself; he comes from a warm, extended ‘circus’ family. And in his own way, he’s as determined as the Doctor. You just know he’ll never give up.
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Martha
The maid who is a quiet observer of all that goes on in Darke House; who develops an unswerving devotion to Margrat. Small, mousey haired and timid looking…she proves to be anything but.

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Thank you so much to Deborah for this guest post. I now can't wait to read Wickedness. I will hopefully have a review up for you all in a week or two! =) 

In the meantime I hope you enjoyed getting to know the characters more.