My Heroine's Conflict

It seems like I'm always killing someone's parents. That doesn't seem very nice considering Mother's Day is just around the corner. But I have a long list of characters who are parentless. Maybe it's just one, maybe it's both.

The reason I bring this up is because the heroine of The Crusader's Maiden, Bliss, just finished a scene where she had to dig up an object she buried after her foster father and all his friends were massacred three years before the story starts.

She buried it where his grave should be. Trouble is, she couldn't actually find enough of him to bury . . . gruesome yes, but avenging the death of the only man she knew of as a father will carry her through the story. Finding out the mysteries of her past will also be a driving force. Combined with why he hid things from her, she has plenty of GMC. All will be revealed by the end of the book and who her parents really were.

To share a little of the graveyard scene:

 “You buried them out here? By yourself?” Lo walked out into the courtyard.

“There wasn't anyone else to do it.” She put the toes of her boots right up to the edge of the bottom door facing, but didn't go any farther. Long ago blisters—turned into calluses as she tried to fend for herself out here—stung as she thought about each shovelful of dirt that went into the graves.

He faced her, eyes strangely illuminated by the moon. “You didn't wonder if they might rise out of these graves and get you?”

“It wasn't a vampire, Mr. Bonham. There wasn't enough left of them to reanimate.” She grasped the door frame. What right did he have to come here and question her about what had happened that night?

Even stepping outside is a feat she has to overcome. Not that she's a shut-in or anything. She does go outside, just not to the courtyard where she buried eight men. She's spent her entire life in one area and doesn't know much about the outside world. It's going to be a task for the hero, Lo, to get her away from there. And he needs her, but doesn't know how to convince her of that. I can't wait for that need to turn into a real relationship instead of her beating the holy, ever-loving hell out of him. Her foster father taught her well.