Sometimes a character can reside in a writer’s mind long before they come to exist within pages. Such was the case when I created Alyssa. She remained nameless for many years.
The first stirrings of her character came from “Criminal Minds” season 6 with the Ashley Seaver character, the daughter of a serial killer. It was a backstory that intrigued me. It disappointed me when they never continued it and she only lasted a season. I decided I wanted to explore such a character idea. Only, I was working on “Edge of Glory” at the time and it still had my complete devotion. Then I got divorced and severely struggled with my depression for a couple of years after.
As “Edge of Glory” wasn’t working out for me, I slowly shelved it. I needed something new. A friend and I were co-writing a project at the time in which I introduced the initial character for Alyssa in January 2019. With my inspiration from “Criminal Minds”, I toyed with the serial killer’s daughter. I had no idea what I was getting myself into!
The collaboration project wound up changing, and I branched off to write “Beyond Dark” on my own. Here, it underwent its first rewrite. Originally, Alyssa was a profiler brilliant with capturing serial killers. With my addiction to watching “Deadly Women” and after reading Candice DeLong’s book, I wanted to experiment with a profiler who specialized in female serial killers. I wanted to see how weird, how gruesome would these cases get if these FSKs replicated some male serial killer cases? Back when I did journalism in college, we were always told to ask: “I wonder?” This also applies to novel writing. This is how Alyssa Rawkesby came to be a criminal psychologist who specializes in female serial killers.
Since I made Alyssa’s father, Greg, a serial killer, specifically a narcissistic psychopath, it left me to wonder about her mother. Should she be a willing accomplice in the murders? A doting mother clueless to what her husband was doing, another victim in some sense? Or should I make her a different antagonist altogether?
True to my pattern, I enjoy making things as hard for my characters as possible. So, I made Alyssa’s mother, Dawn, a narcissist. Two deadly tornadoes meeting in the same sky and an only child left in the middle to suffer through it all.
I wanted to start the series with a case that exposed Alyssa’s painful backstory and slowly show readers why she is the way she is. I didn’t want readers to go through the first few books of the series knowing nothing of why she can be an abrasive woman who pushes others away. There needed to be a glimpse beneath her tough exterior. The theme of mirroring Alyssa with a female serial killer really appealed to me. The slow, intricate unravelling of her mental stability, the pieces that slowly become exposed as the killer also escalates, and use the rest of the series to reveal more of her story. The focus in “Belladonna” narrows in on her toxic relationship with her mother. A future book in the series will focus on her father.
I felt it was important to start with Alyssa’s mother, because as previously discussed, it is that lack of maternal nurturing and being deprived of unconditional love that begins forming the roots of personality disorders. Since that is a foundational issue with many serial killers, I felt that first-hand glimpse through Alyssa’s point of view might give readers a unique perspective. To see the first FSK of the series through the eyes of someone who relates much too closely with her. Alyssa knows Belladonna is a monster, but can’t help that part of her that wants to relate. Because she grew up with two narcissists, Alyssa lacks empathy and doesn’t relate to people or the world like many of us do. She truly feels like she is looking from the outside in. Genuine human connection has been so minimal in her life. Alyssa relates more to the women she hunts down and apprehends than she does with normal people. So jaded and cynical she’s become, that she finds it easier to isolate herself from the world away from work than try to connect with others. This is part of her character arc she develops through the series as she learns to form genuine connections.
She isn’t likeable when we first meet her and witness her initial interactions with Thayer. This is meant to leave her development wide open for later on, to witness some of her healing at a vital time in her recovery. She is a brilliant profiler, but tormented and torn. Bitter. Her intelligence and ability to get into the heads of FSKs comes from years of psychological damage, living first-hand with the warped fantasy of a domineering mother.
As we’re going to find, however, Alyssa has come a long way from being a frantic 18-year-old fleeing home for a college a province away to pursue her law enforcement career against her mother’s demands. She made some hard mistakes along the way, but has learned some vital lessons, and will continue to learn and evolve. I am so excited to have you along for her journey!
I hope you’ve enjoyed a glimpse into how I created Alyssa. Something I also do for each of my characters is create a Spotify playlist for them, which I will share here! Next week, we look at Alyssa’s rookie sidekick, Thayer, and the interesting way in which he became a permanent fixture in the series.
Next part of this series focuses on Thayer!
And as promised, the Spotify playlist!
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