Family
I write in a paranormal setting with vampires and witches and shapeshifters (oh my!), but the heart of my work is family - and all that can mean and entail. It's human nature to bond, so if we don't have blood family, we gather people around us.
Blood is thicker than water, but love is thicker than blood.
In the Strange Allies series, Della has a higher calling, but making sure her mother is taken care of always comes first, and she feels horrible every time she has to lie to her mother about her job. It's been the two of them since she was five years old, so leaving home is painful. Because Della isn't a normal girl, there will be no college graduation ceremony, no wedding to a nice man, and no grandbabies for her mother to spoil, but she'll let her mother hold on to those dreams as long as possible.
In the Children of Ossiria series, Carys starts out fiercely independent. She's able to do anything she wants when she decides to do it, so accepting increased burdens and letting people in is something she struggles with since it brings the risk of loss. Making friends is easy, but falling in love is the last thing she wanted to do for a while. Enter William.
In Outcast, Michael becomes a young father, but he's also a paladin, and the supernatural world is no place for an infant. His daughter it sent to live with her grandparents, but despite still technically in his teens at the start of the book, he's committed to knowing her and making sure she grows up with the best they can do.
How do you keep your family safe in a world of monsters?
Is having a family - blood or otherwise - a blessing or a liability?
What if your children have greater destinies that cannot be avoided?
These and more questions are the issues my characters face in all of my books.
Background: I have no close family. My parents and grandparents are gone. I've never married and never had children. My closest friends all live outside California, so it's me and Scrapper, the cat that sheds enough to make more cats. At 39, I'm okay with a quiet life, but it was a lot harder to deal with in my twenties, so my characters get to explore questions and avenues I never got to do.
