My name is Lena, and I write damaged men.

This blog is dedicated to Rose and her wonderfully similar blog title.

(And Colin, still the most heartbreaking villain I've ever written.)

Why is it that I love my male leads so much more than my females? Sure, I can write a bratty girl mouthing off to her parents, her master, or steeping in inner turmoil as well as anyone. But the thing that really makes me fall in love with a story is the far-from-perfect guy I can write so well that I fall in love with him every time. It’s my thing, getting those smirky guys to really pop. I love the protagonist, of course, but what I really love is the guy SHE loves (and usually somewhat hates). It doesn’t even have to be the main guy, or the one she ends up with. Actually, she doesn’t even have to love him. He just has to be there.

Every time I write a story, that guy ends up in there. I don’t even mean to. But the guy really starts coming alive when he starts being a jerk and I halfway hate him. I have to have those guys in the story. It doesn’t matter who it is or in what story, I just have to have him.

Those are my characters I’ve loved the best—the motherless playboy who treats girls like tissues, his struggling-with-his-faith brother who tries so hard to be the good guy and doesn’t quite make it, the discontented vampire full of inner turmoil one minute and smirking and arrogant the next, or the widower father rebelling against, well, everything. I adore them, one and all, and more than that, I adore writing them. I wrote the perfect guy in my very first story, but I don’t love him nearly as much as the bad guy in that story. In fact, I loved the bad guy so much that I wrote an entire novel for him, although its filth beyond measure will keep it from ever seeing anyone’s eyes but my own. Really, I enjoy reading it on occasion. I just don’t like to be reminded that I could ever come up with someone that despicable. Or that he still holds a soft spot in my heart.

But wow, he was fun to write.