My current characters misbehave-- a lot. As art recovery agents, they are essentially professional thieves, just thieves with a permit. The tag line I came up with for TAKE ME IF YOU CAN is:

SHE'S GOT A LICENSE TO STEAL. HE'S TOO HOT TO HANDLE! 

The moral dilemmas that come up in this book (the first of a new series for me) aren't easy ones to solve. The hero is a thief, a classic bad boy. The heroine is also a thief, but she's, well, an anti-thief. She steals what has already been stolen--she just gets it back for the rightful owners.

Does that make what she does okay? Not really. My art recovery agents break the law. A lot. They don't report things to the police, because that could screw up their methods. And their methods are unconventional, to say the least. Sometimes they find themselves going head to head with the police, being hauled in for questioning and even arrested or prosecuted.

It can be hard to write characters who are heroic and yet break the law. The motivation for their behavior is key.

In TAKE ME IF YOU CAN, Liam eventually redeems himself. Somewhat. He's still got a long way to go. But then, don't most of us? While we may not break the law or steal things, none of us is lily-white, morally speaking. And to me, this is what makes people--and by definition characters--interesting.

In TMIYC, Liam and Avy have a long discussion about the definition of "theft" and "property" and whether stealing can ever be justified. To me, this was one of the pivotal scenes in the book, because he's very persuasive and he truly believes what he's arguing. He sees everything in shades of gray, even morality. For Avy things are more black and white . . . or are they? After all, she too is a professional thief. It's only her motivations that are different.

He's a hedonist. She's a crusader.

Both characters are three-dimensional and sympathetic (or at least I like to think they are).  

But both behave badly towards each other during the course of the book--because, let's face it, you can't be entirely honest with a thief and both of them are trying to outwit and outsteal the other.

Which one of these morally tarnished people wins in the end? I'll let you be the judge of that. Do they redeem themselves? I'll let you be the judge of that, too.

All I can say is that this badly behaved hero and heroine absorbed me and challenged me like no others have in my career as a writer. They were more interesting because they're complicated and each of them have murky depths.

Perhaps I enjoy writing--and reading--characters who violate the rules and push the envelope because they allow me to be human, and they allow the reader to be human too. Those pure, good characters who walk around in flowing robes and halos? Frankly, I can't relate to them! They make me feel guilty.

We may get annoyed with flawed characters and want to smack them, but I think we like them better in the end simply because they seem more human. And in the end that's what the reading experience is all about: an examination/celebration/condemnation of what it's like to be human.

Happy Thursday! Best, Karen