Sasha

From

White Wolf

Copyright © 2017 by Lauren Gilley

All Rights Reserved 

Nikita.

Good. Kind. Dangerous.

Friend. Pack.

There was so much pain. So many sounds. And smells.

Chaos. Too bright, too cold, too much.

He smelled blood, and something dead, and the rank fear-sweat of humans. Humans afraid of him.

If it's true about Dartmoor that I like to write characters who are difficult to like, but easy to love, then it's doubly true of the characters in White Wolf. Maybe. Some of them, at least. I think Sasha is pretty darn loveable and likeable. 

The fun thing about writing, for me anyway, is stepping outside the box of my everyday life and into that of someone who, on the surface, is different in every way. And then excavating down and finding the universal things that make them wonderful, and weird, and familiar. 

Sons of Rome, being paranormal, gives me a chance to explore with a freedom that doesn't exist in a closed environment like a biker club. There are still rules to this paranormal world, yes, but we can go anywhere, peek in on anyone, and see things through an array of lenses. It's freeing, and at moments worrying - do I have the writing chops for this? - but it affords more latitude when it comes to characters. 

Sasha is nineteen, Siberian, naïve, and kind-hearted. By contrast, his friends are jaded, experienced, necessarily violent, and duplicitous - also necessarily. It's delightful to invert the trope, and turn the sweet boy into the monster...and the monsters into the helpless tagalongs.