Betrayal: The Best Kind of Conflict

Given it's close to the Ides of March, betrayal is a perfect topic for the month.

Julius Caeser, of course, isn't a romance, but it wrings incredible pathos out of Caeser's betrayal by Brutus and Cassius.

Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet is a romance and it's also fueled by betrayal. Do the lovers stay true to each other and betray their families? Or stay with their families and not each other.

Their answer was intended to find a way around the conflicting loyalties. We all know how that went.

Betrayal is the best kind of story conflict because it's something we've all experienced and so hard to recover from. Every romantic break-up is a form of betrayal, as our partner is revealed as not the person we thought them to be.

That's why it hurts so much.

In Phoenix Legacy, I raised the stakes between my hero and heroine by putting a horrible betrayal in their background. Philip Drake's background was inspired by the film Running on Empty, where former 60s radicals are on the run with their two young children. Except in my story, unlike the movie, Philip's parents are very bad people.

And to get away from them and protect the only person he loves, Philip does a horrible thing and the one he loves views this a betrayal so terrible that she'd gladly spit on his grave.

Sometimes, I have problem with the conflict between a hero and heroine when writing stories. In Legacy, I had the opposite. I worried the conflict was impossible to overcome.

It takes some time and a little bit of bloodshed but they do work it out.

I'm currently working on the next book in the Phoenix Institute series and, perhaps because betrayal was on my mind, I set the plot up so that the hero and heroine would be faced with a choice, like Romeo and Juliet, between each other and their families. These  conflicting loyalties fuel to the story and, I hope, give it some poignancy.

There's another kind of betrayal that happens in stories too, one I haven't tackled yet. It's the temptation to betray oneself, to make a choice that the character knows isn't the right one but they want something so badly, they don't care. Macbeth makes this choice and regrets it. But the best book I've read about this kind of betrayal is Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold. In that book, Miles must make a choice between his double identities, as it seems like claiming one is betraying the other.

But, he concludes, "the only thing you can't betray for your heart's desire is your heart."

Corrina Lawson is a writer, mom, geek and superhero. She's the author of the Seneca series set in ancient North American, the Phoenix Institute superhero romance series, and a Senior Editor at GeekMom.com. 

Saying "I love you," in not so many words

It should be the big moment in a romance, where someone confesses "I love you." But my favorite declarations of love tend to be, well, no so direct.

The most famous example, of course, follows Leia's declaration of love in The Empire Strikes Back. Han Solo, instead of answering in kind, simply says "I know."

Perfect.

I tend to love these moments, where more is said by not being said and when it come down to write those moments in my own books, it wasn't a simply "I love you," followed by "I love you, too."

The favorite declaration I've written is from an unpublished manuscript, Above the Fold, about a hard-charging reporter and a security agent who's trying to put his life back together. They've been dealing with how outwardly incompatible they are through the whole book, even while dodging bullets and defusing bombs. She thinks he wants to fix her and the way she lives. She's mistaken.

"I chose my life, as messed up at it is. I don’t need a rescuer.”
“I do,” Grayson said. 

In Phoenix Legacy, my hero, Philip Drake aka Hawk, is convinced he is so damaged he's incapable of a proper relationship. (He has a point, given his morals are basically 'protect those you care about and the rest can go hang.') A simple "I love you"  is out of the scope of his comprehension. Instead, he gives the heroine, Delilah Sefton, what he thinks she needs.

“I’m not trying to put you off. I’m telling you, honestly: whatever you want, I’ll do it for you. Whatever you want.”
She sensed the depth of that statement from him this time. He meant that literally. If she told him to stay away, he would. He might watch her from a distance to ensure her safety, but he’d fade from her life.
No.


Philip repeats whatever you want several times. It's his version of "I love you."  But Del knows this is not the way to a true partnership.

“You didn’t fail me, you saved my life.” She kissed him lightly on the lips. “I’m pregnant from a medical rape, I’ve been thrown in with a bunch of would- be superheroes, been chased by minions of some villain, and we’ve just had a hell of a reintroduction. I know very little of what I want.” She laid her head on his shoulder.

“But please don’t vanish, Hawk. Please don’t vanish. I don’t think I could stand to say goodbye to you again.”

And finally, Del doesn't exactly say "I love you" at the end but she does use words that Hawk understands perfectly.

“It was the right thing.” That Cheshire had shot him didn’t matter. That he’d
reached the point where he could give Cheshire a second chance, that mattered. That meant he could change. He didn’t have to be a killer.
“How is the baby? Is he growing normally?”
“Our son is fine. Alec told me they finally found Cheshire’s back-ups in his home, buried inside his stereo equipment. Once we find a doctor we can trust, they’ll have the right information in case of any complications.”
“Good.” A long pause. “Stay with me.” 
She lay down beside him. He sighed happily. 
“Now what?” he asked. “
Whatever you want, Hawk,” she answered. “Whatever you want.”

They finally do exchange "I love you"s at the very end of the book but, by that time, it's a done deal. The words are confirmation of what they already know, not revelation.

So what's your favorite declaration of love?

Corrina Lawson is a writer, mom, geek and superhero, not necessarily in that order. You can find her at www.corrina-lawson.com or www.geekmom.com

Redemption & Romance

I'm always drawn to a good redemption story, especially for romance heroes.

I'm not sure what it is that so fascinates me about a person trying desperately to change. But I love seeing a person who has messed up in the worst way overcoming their past.

The classic example of this is my obsession with the 1980s television show, The Equalizer.

Robert McCall used to work for the CIA. He's killed a lot of people, to the point where he talks about being haunted by the face of every one who has died because of him.

In the pilot, McCall's decided he's had enough blood and death and he quits the CIA and takes out an ad in the newspaper: "Odds against you? Need help? Call the Equalizer!"

His former CIA colleague calls McCall the "most dangerous man he's ever met" and says the government won't let him walk away. McCall tells them to take their best shot. A friend aware of the situation tells him "I'll cry at your funeral." McCall says "I'll be there."

When the woman he's protecting from a stalker says "I'd like to get to know you better," McCall responds with "you wouldn't."

It's no wonder I was hooked on this show from the beginning.

Later, McCall struggles to do things the right way but every now and then the backslides, like killing the rapists who hurt one of his clients. Or using a bomb to blow up the people who kidnap his daughter. Or the time when the wedding he's attending is crashed by terrorists. He uses a doorstop from the bathroom to kill one of the terrorists before going after the others.

McCall has been the template for two of my romance heroes. The first manuscript is as yet unpublished and that character is not nearly as dark as McCall.

The second, however, is *darker* than McCall. That's Philip Drake of Phoenix Legacy. Drake, like McCall, is a former black ops CIA agent. And, like McCall, he's a killer but now he's trying to figure out how to do the right thing.

If he can figure out what that right thing is.

Philip is a bit of a psychopath. Because he was raised by an abusive father and because he had to kill his stepfather and several others to survive to adulthood, Philip's morals basically are "protect the person I care about and all others are expendable." Laws and regular morality mean nothing to him. The only person who matters is his foster daughter, Beth, who he rescued during a mission years ago. Beth is Philip's one fragile hold on humanity.

Philip has the ability to heal himself of nearly any injury. This means he looks young, even though he says he's too old and cynical to look under thirty. It also means because he gets an adrenaline rush when his body heals, Philip is addicted to pain, to the point where he physically harms himself just to feel at all.

So he's a stone-cold killer who's addicted to pain with a very fragile hold on his humanity. I thought Philip was extreme for a romance hero but then I talked briefly with Anne Stuart--who's known for her dark heroes--and she said "I love it." With that kind of endorsement, I went ahead and wrote the story.

So who's Philip's heroine? No other than the daughter of the people Philip had to kill in order to survive as a teenager. (He did have one other very good reason--protecting someone else-- but that's a spoiler, so I'd rather not say.) As the blurb says, Del Sefton is ready to cheerfully spit on his grave.

Except my bad guys have involved Del by impregnating her using Philip's sperm. The bad guys want to grow the next generation of psychic healers. They tried to keep Philip from finding out but he does. And he's less than pleased.

So Del's carrying the baby of someone she blames for the worst tragedy in her life. And Philip has to convince her to trust him or the bad guys will get her and the child.

Here's an excerpt:


Philip pounded the floor, digging the glass shards in deeper. Pain shot up his arms. Blood pooled onto the floor. He closed his eyes, breathing heavily. Sweat poured down his back. He held up his bloody hands and opened his eyes.

He still imagined holding Del. The lust triggered by the pain spread through his body. 

He imagined Del in his arms, in the back seat of the Charger. She wasn’t a child any longer, she was a beautiful woman, one who’d saved his life, one who—

One whose life had been wrecked so she could carry a child who was either his brother or his son.

Blood slid down his arms, soaking his shirt.

What a mess.

Daydreaming about her wouldn’t help. Neither would crippling himself before he caught the men looking for her. Wrecked hands wouldn’t help him find Genet, they wouldn’t help him interrogate Cheshire.

They wouldn’t help him make certain Del and her son could live in peace.

Philip pulled out a pocketknife and flicked the shards out of his knuckles, one by one. Pain slashed at him. He grinned, riding with it, feeling his nerves sizzle with the agony. His erection pushed against his jeans. He ignored it. He’d not give into it, not when thinking about Del. She didn’t deserve that.


It's a measure of how messed up Philip is that when Del finally lets loose her anger at him violently, he's all "oh, that's good, more."

Let's just say the sex scene is quite intense.

Maybe it's because the characters, particularly Philip, are so lost that the ending to this story makes me so happy. They had to come so far from where they'd been to care about each other.

And that's the trick of a great redemption story. Their happy ending, under the worse circumstances, somehow gives me hope that I can redeem my own very mundane mistakes.

Though the other part of me says the story was fun to write because Philip is so single-mindedly without conscience about protecting those he loves. Get in his way? You're dead. Kidnap his woman? He'll crash his truck into your house. Shoot him? He'll shrug it off and keep coming.

Sorta like the Terminator. But hotter. And (I would hope) better in bed.

Corrina Lawson is a writer, mom, geek and superhero. She's written the Phoenix Institute series for Samhain Publishing, including Phoenix Rising, Luminous, and Phoenix Legacy. She also is a co-editor for the GeekMom blog on Wired.com. And would love to write a great redemption story for Magneto, if she could imagine Michael Fassbender in the role. www.corrina-lawson.com