Why Cain’s Not Just Another Villian

I love villians. They’re fun to watch and they’re fun to write. Instead of being stuck within the constraints of what a sane person would do and say, you can really go outside the box. But there was one thing that I noticed about most of them. Most of them either had absolutely no moral code, and/or they were just totally insane. I hadn’t ever written a villian of my own until I started writing The Cain Chronicles. Honestly, I’ve always been a sucker for the misunderstood. Take Pitch Black, for instance. The first moment I saw the anti-hero, Riddick, I was hooked. Then when I found out they were doing a second movie that went more into his mind and why he’s the way he is, I practically jumped off my chair. I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure I saw The Chronicles of Riddick opening weekend. Likewise, growing up I always wondered about Cain. What were his motives? Why did he kill his brother? I always wondered, just a little bit, if he’d been misunderstood in some way. Of course, this thought came from the same mind that had me praying, at eleven years old, to God, asking Him if he would tell Satan that, even though he was bad, I still loved him because he was my brother. Yeah, I was in a lot of trouble for that prayer. I think my mom thought I would grow up to be a devil worshiper.

I went into The Mark of Cain hoping to show the story from Cain’s perspective. I wanted people to wonder if they really knew the truth of the oldest story of all. I wanted people to feel for him. So I made my own anti-hero in him. I thought it would be really hard, but it wasn’t. He came through my fingers as though he really existed. He came out, in my opinion, pretty well-rounded. Though I got to play with him at his most evil in a flashback of him as Vlad the Impaler (the Romanian prince who was the basis of the story for Dracula), I also got to play with him in his most vulnerable moments. In the moments that made him the way he was. Yes, he might be completely evil at times, but even at his worst he still had his own moral code. And that was the funnest thing of all. Most villians have none. They kill and they don’t care. But Cain DOES. He DID. And that was more interesting to me than a good old-fashioned villian who doesn’t have any moral compass.

I hope people like him as much as I do because he’s definitely the most interesting character I’ve ever written. And, though these other books aren’t published (yet), I have written two other series. Of course, they’re full of “good” people. And yes, I even have a stereotypical villian. But she’s not as fun. Now for the other two series I’m writing right now, they both go back to the anti-hero I oh so love.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mark-Cain-Chronicles-Book-ebook/dp/B009KAM0FO

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