Okay, maybe I should post this too – this is the blurb for The Demons of Khemas:
Being the tavern wench in love with the barbarian mercenary from the far north was not what Tikka wanted to be. She wanted security, and a family, and stable income. None of which was likely to happen if she were to hitch herself to a man like that. No. Her ambitions went towards somebody like a trader, or a potter or a stoneworker or maybe a tanner (even if they tended to smell bad, but that was still a stable trade with a reasonably good income) – now, a blacksmith would have been just perfect – or… well, anything but a man who would most likely end up either dead or a crippled right after saddling her with a bunch of children and in debt to half the people living within an easy traveling distance.
Mercenaries, especially barbarian ones, just were not good prospects when it came to potential husbands (especially since there was no guarantee he would even be willing to marry her in the first place).
Not that she was in love with him, at all, no matter what her coworkers and her friend the ghost kept insisting.
But when he disappeared she could not just forget him.
She needed to find what had happened to him.
Even if it meant infiltrating the temple of the god she most feared in the city filled with the temples of a plenitude of gods and goddesses all of which scared her.
Demons, ghosts and magic in world of ancient cities, barbarian swordsmen and cursed families (and a bit of sweet romance).
I may change that too, I think it may sound more like a romance novel than the novel actually is – the romance is there, but it’s more of a MacGuffin than the point of the story, it’s the reason why Tikka does the things she does in the beginning. After she has gotten hopelessly snared in what is going on she has other reasons too, but what starts the plot is her attraction to Grath. Frankly, I’m not even sure if she actually is in love with him in the beginning, although she is undoubtedly attracted and very much likes him, and she is in love towards the end, but yep, I wasn’t thinking in terms of a romance when I wrote this, just adventure, romance just seemed like the most likely reason for me to make the protagonist to start on a path which she knew might very likely get her in over her head with a bunch of very dangerous people. Which should have been enough to keep her away even before the supernatural beasties got into play. On the other hand, Tikka does seem to have some tendency towards acting before thinking things through, no matter how much introspection she does. Or maybe she just uses that as an excuse when she does something she knows is not the smartest possible thing to do.
Yep, I don’t really consciously plan my characters, I’m one of those people for whom they pretty much just walk in and then slowly show me what they are like. And I’d rather not think what they might show of me to a shrink – if we assume that they are fully me, aspects of my own mind. Personally I’m somewhat inclined to thinking they may also be something else, at least in part. Who knows what, I don’t think I quite want to go there. 🙂
Northern dreaming 
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