In Memoriam...

It's Memorial Day, a time to honor fallen heroes.  There are some authors, like GRR Martin for instance, who seem to relish killing off their characters.  I realized my bloodlust has waned in recent years.

There are a few deaths in my erotica stories (notably in Transformed Into a Dominatrix the second story is about a guy who puts on a corset that turns him into a female serial killer who brutally murders a few dudes) but not a whole lot.

In the Girl Power series, none of the main heroes die.  They don't even "die" and need Lazarus Pits, cloning, magic, or anything else to be revived as in comic books.  Though in the second one clones of three of the four main heroes are killed by their female counterparts.  The fourth one is killed at the end of the third book.

In the second book the Aquamanwoman character loses her husband early in the book and then later her mom makes a heroic sacrifice.  I guess I was being a dick to her because no one else lost their families.  But she does gain a daughter and bury the hatchet with her brother sister so I guess it sort of evened out for her.

In the Chances Are series, Steve Fischer "dies" and is reborn as Stacey Chance.  Otherwise none of the main good characters die.  In the third book a doctor who had been helping Stacey gets turned into a little girl, but she doesn't die.

The Tales of the Scarlet Knight series has a number of deaths.  Though a few of them are "deaths" in the comic book sense. 

• In book 1 Emma Earl's boss Ian MacGregor turns into the Black Dragoon and kills himself.
• In book 2 Emma's Aunt Gladys is killed off page; the book starts with her funeral.  Her parents "die" in that they're revived when time is altered and then realtered back to normal.
• In book 3 Emma Earl's mentor Percival Graves is killed by the new Black Dragoon.  Emma is killed by the goddess Isis, but is brought back to life.
• In book 5 Sylvia Joubert, a good witch, sacrifices herself to carry an overloading antimatter reactor into space
• In book 6 Emma Earl's baby "dies."  There are a number of other deaths, but they're all in the future and thus don't count as real deaths.
• In book 7 Emma Earl's boyfriend the Sewer Rat dies to save her and their baby.  Captain Lottie Donovan, the Scarlet Knight's ally on the police force, dies stopping some Russian gangsters
• In book 8 the Emma of a parallel universe sacrifices herself to save the multiverse.  A couple of characters are brought back to life.

My book Where You Belong has a number of deaths in it too.  The book actually starts with his mom being killed in a bizarre car accident.  The most dramatic death is when the woman the narrator Frost Devereaux is named after is gunned down trying to marry another woman in upstate New York.

When you look at it that way, I've definitely mellowed in my old age when it comes to killing people off.  I guess in those later stories there just never seemed any reason to whack anyone.  Honestly I don't think it even occurred to me.  Others, like Michael Offutt, are a little more liberal in killing people off.

There you go, something to think about on Memorial Day.  See you in June!