Something Wicked by pixelmum

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Author Bio : 

Hi! I'm Pixelmum, and I'm a British scientist and writer of LGBT+ novels, drabbles and everything in between. I write thrillers, mafia and sci fi stories, and I'm currently writing a horror novella. The main thing that connects my work across genres is that there is always queer love in my books.

Premise/Blurb:

Get out of jail, get yet another crappy criminal henchman job, get his hotshot lawyer ex-girlfriend back. Oh yeah -- and get a murderous demon exorcised from his head. Jason Torres has his route back from rock-bottom perfectly planned out, right? That is, until he gets catapulted head-first into a police investigation into his ex-employers, the mysterious and deadly Saudi criminal organization, Alcor.

The police think they've hit the jackpot by exploiting criminal trash like Jason to take down Alcor, except Jason has conveniently forgotten to mention a few details: his innate ability to attract chaos, his unfortunate possession by a bloodthirsty demon, and the fact that he's falling in love with his handsome new police partner, Dante Russo. And of course, there's Jason's biggest deadliest omission. His relationship with Alcor's sadistic boss is more than strictly professional, and she doesn't like sharing.

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What sparked your interest in writing, and how did you end up writing on Wattpad?

Technical scientific writing is part of my job, so I thought that creative writing would be an absurd hobby for me since I have no imagination. When COVID lockdown 2020 happened, one of my comic reading buddies suggested that I write a 2k word ficlet and it turned out that I did actually have an imagination. Who knew? I joined Wattpad to see if I could write a full novel, and I've never stopped writing since.

What inspired you to write this particular story?

I read a lot of action comics (mostly DC, Marvel, Image, as well as big manga like Attack on Titan), so I wanted to write a high octane story to get my action fix, but with a strong romantic internal plot. I also wanted to write a story for the nameless disposable henchmen you see in action films: do they have a girlfriend (or a boyfriend) at home worrying about them? Are they even remotely devoted to their mob boss or is their main loyalty to their mortgage? What happens to them if business and pleasure end up mixing? Out of these swirling thoughts my main character, Jason, was born.

How do you create and develop your characters? Do you base them on real people, or are they entirely fictional?

They are very much fictional and I design them to be vehicles for the plot, as well as always having innumerable hard-to-resolve internal plot issues that allow their character arcs to be as strong as possible. In Jason's case, to break his cycle of criminality he must come to terms with his past, but his true redemption comes when he finally puts to rest the ghosts of his incredibly complex love life (mainly by the plot stopping him from having sex for long enough to work out what he actually needs in a partner).

Do you have a favorite scene in your story? If so, what makes it special to you?

Jason has a lot of funny, stupid and embarrassing scenes, but my favourite is when he is jumping out of a window in a cloud of broken glass, bullets and arrows, thinking that he's going to die, and his final thought is that he's forgotten to feed his landlady's cats. I really love his most reckless action scenes because I enjoy the second-hand nihilism; if every day is the last day of your life, how should you live it? Jason says to live in pure chaos.

What were some of the most challenging elements you came across while writing the story? How did you overcome them?

The romance between Jason and his police officer love interest, Dante Russo, was hard to make genuine because Jason is trysexual (meaning that he'll try literally anything sexual), so in the opening chapters we get hints about his complex intimate relationship with his old boss, we witness him having a fling with a cellmate in jail, and we hear about his rather overambitious plans to get his hotshot lawyer ex-girlfriend back. It's hard to imagine him falling for anyone given how he seems to stumble between terrible short-term relationships, so I was determined that Jason follow a plot path that would convince readers that he has fallen deeply and completely for Dante.

What's the best piece of writing advice you've ever received?

"Enter late and leave early" is a screenwriters' saying which I really find works for me. It means that you must start a scene at the latest possible moment, and end it at the earliest possible moment so that the reader is given only the barest information about a scene. Entering a scene late means that the reader is immersed immediately in fast-paced action that maximises impact by avoiding unnecessary exposition, and exiting a scene before it fully resolves means that the reader is left with anticipation and a need to keep reading. I found this particularly relevant for Jason's story where the romantic scenes have a lot more dynamism and tension if kept short.

Thank you for your time!