Blog Tour: Sweet Evil by Wendy Higgins (Creation and Evolution of Kaidan and Anna - Guest Post!)

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About the book!

What if there were teens whose lives literally depended on being bad influences?

This is the reality for sons and daughters of fallen angels.

Tenderhearted Southern girl Anna Whitt was born with the sixth sense to see and feel emotions of other people. She's aware of a struggle within herself, an inexplicable pull toward danger, but Anna, the ultimate good girl, has always had the advantage of her angel side to balance the darkness within. It isn't until she turns sixteen and meets the alluring Kaidan Rowe that she discovers her terrifying heritage and her willpower is put to the test. He's the boy your daddy warned you about. If only someone had warned Anna.

Forced to face her destiny, will Anna embrace her halo or her horns?

GUEST POST by author Wendy Higgins

  How did you come up with the characters of Kaidan and Anna?

The Creation and Evolution of Anna and Kaidan:

When the idea of angels and demons came to me three years ago (I hadn't read any other YA angel stories at that point), I wanted them to be as close to humans as possible so that people could relate to their struggles. 

I first thought of a young girl whose father was a demon. The way I brainstorm is by asking myself questions: Who raised her? What are her strengths and weaknesses? How does her angel/demon blood affect her "human" body etc. What I came up with was a very naive, innocent girl who didn't know her demonic father, raised by a very sweet human woman who showered her with love and nurtured her angelic instincts. She would have good and bad elements warring inside her, just like each of us, but to an extreme.

Voila.

And then the fun began when I asked myself “Who will be this sweet girl’s love interest?” *evil laugh* It had to be a son of one of the other Dukes (earthly demon bosses). So I went through the list until landing on the Duke of Lust. Whoa boy. This couldn’t be more perfect. I began to craft a boy with all of the traits I found sexy—musician/drummer, English accent, mysterious,confident, the body, the blue eyes...yeah, he was my teen-dream. And then I put the two of them together and watched the sparks fly.

The first scene that came to me is what I consider the pivotal moment of the book—chapter seventeen—Kaidan’s Sacrifice. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but I’ll just say when this scene invaded my brain I was in love. I had no idea what the setting was or at what point of the story it would happen, but I knew that everything balanced on this moment.

So I asked myself, “What happened before this scene to get them to this point?” And that’s when other scenes began to form: the lake house party, their meeting at the club, their first
kiss. All out of order. Learning these characters and their story was like a puzzle, and I enjoyed every moment of figuring them out.

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Read my FIVE STAR review of SWEET EVIL here!

About the author:

After earning a Creative Writing degree from George Mason University and a Masters in Curriculum and Instruction from Radford, I taught high school English until becoming a mommy. I've always had a heart for teens, and writing YA stories gives me the opportunity to delve into the ambiguities of those pivotal years before adulthood.
I live in the D.C. area with my husband, daughter, and son.