Passion Blog Tour - Does anyone know who the good guys are anymore?

So it's not long now until Passion is published (14th June) and I have to tell you that this is my favourite book of the series so far. I'm really pleased to say that Lauren Kate finally clears up some of the burning questions I've had since reading Fallen and for those of you that are interested, my review will go live in the next few days and I hope you'll check it out.

As part of the Passion Blog Tour, I'd been thinking lately that it's not so easy to see who the good guys are and who the bad guys are in the Fallen series and I thought this would make a good discussion! So, without further a do, I give you....

When people talk to me about Fallen, they often ask who the “good guys” are and who the “bad guys” are and whether any of the characters are really just out for themselves. It’s funny, writing a book where so many of the characters are either angels or demons, you’d think the answers to these questions would be fairly black and white.

Instead, it is an all-consuming shade of gray. I’m interested in pre-conceived notions of what makes something “good” and what makes something “evil.” It’s a big part of what drew me to writing about this series. In a lot of theological texts, good is defined as the absence of evil—but that doesn’t really inspire much confidence. There’s got to be something more redeemable than that in a character we think of as an angel.

A character cannot flat line at either good or evil. With every page, with every decision that they face, they must reinforce—or undermine—the identity they’re working toward portraying. In some ways, as the author, I am in control of this, but what I like the most is when my characters surprise me. And in the Fallen series, that happens regularly.

I want my readers to fall in love with the “bad guys” (I did!) just as much as I want them to occasionally question the ethics of my “good guys.” This, I think, is the moment when an archetype jumps off the page and becomes a fully developed character, a real person that we can relate to.

One thing I can say with certainty is that there is not a single character in my books who is purely out for him or herself. These characters have a very long history with one another. They are all aware of the stakes. The implications of their collective narrative reaches far beyond any single character. They may not always get along, but they are as close as a close-knit family and very aware of how interconnect and reliant they are on one another.

Thank you to Lauren and Random House Children's Books for organising the Passion Blog Tour. The tour continues tomorrow at Girls Without A Bookshelf.