Good morning folks. Welcome back to the Meet My Character Monday Blog Hop. If you have a character you want to introduce or to read about more amazing characters, visit the Meet My Character Monday website.
A quick announcement, HIM has a release date of February 28th, 2014. I’m so excited, so today I want to introduce you to the villain of HIM.
I did not give Amy’s abuser a name or describe him physically. I didn’t name him for many reasons. One is because Amy is constantly telling people, “Don’t say that man’s name, please. I can’t bear to hear his name.” In the following excerpt, we hear her explanation for this:
“I can take care of myself. And this he you are referring to, he’s your uncle…”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say his name. I refuse to ever say his name. I don’t want to hear his name either. I just can’t. Just call him, he. That’s what I do.”
“Why can’t we use his name?”
“Because he makes me say it too much when he…” I broke off unable to continue.
In another scene where Amy is investigating him, trying to gather evidence against him, we find out that his other victims refuse to say his name as well, and we see how hearing and saying his name affects his victims:
I gave her a long moment to try to put the names together, but when she didn’t, I said his name and how I was related to him. The second the words came out of my mouth, I knew. She looked just as sick at hearing them as I was at saying them. His name was something I absolutely refused to say aloud. When I did, a bit of stomach acid or chunks of food usually came up. My insides started to shake as if I’d had too much caffeine or sugar. My stomach tightened, cramped, and then I felt as if I was going to have diarrhea.
I purposely didn’t give him a physical description so that the reader could picture for themselves what this man looked like, sounded like, etc. I also did this because Amy refuses to see him as a person. I personally picture him as a man in his mid-forties, six-feetish with dark hair and eyes.
He has been married once and has two children: Eve and Michael. He had two steady girlfriends, but the second one, features most prominent in the novel. She has two children: Kyle and Katie. Amy suspects that he has raped Katie and had a hand in Kyle’s death, but just how much of hand, he hopes no one ever finds out.
The man has two distinct personalities throughout the novel: the smooth talking brother, which we see in the following scene:
“Thanks, sis. You’re so good to me.” He hugged her tight in a way that said he loved her and couldn’t imagine not having her in his life. She hugged him back just as tightly. The sight of him acting so normal made me want to scream in frustration. With him acting like brother of the year, I would never be able to convince anyone of who he really was.
And the abuser, which we see in this scene:
He lunged for me and pulled me out of my chair by my ponytail. I yelped in pain, and instinctively reached up to try and pull his hand away. When I did, his other hand grabbed me by the throat and squeezed. “Listen little girl, you do as I say without the lip, do you hear me?”
Fortunately, for all the other characters in the novel, he doesn’t survive. Coming upon the body on the deck one character describes the scene this way:
I let my eyes take in the scene: the bloody boardwalk, the dirty, sandy, naked man lying face up on the warming wood. Thankfully, someone had covered his middle so that he wasn’t completely exposed. My stomach heaved at the sight of his open eyes, staring straight toward the heavens.
But the question is, who killed him and why now?
To find out more about this novel, check out the novel’s Facebook page or read the first few chapters on Goodreads.
https://www.facebook.com/HIMaNovel
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24377181-him
https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/375385-him?chapter=0
https://jennifer-reynolds-thzu.squarespace.com/#/him/
http://www.pinterest.com/talisman1222/him/
