So... I really don't seem to have used my writing blog at all, have I? I'm trying to decide whether to shelve it, or to give it another go.

Right now I'm in the middle of coming up with some really significant plot points for Vae Victor, which is exciting. For about two years now I've known that there were these couple of years that Anann is at Caltech and Michael is off in DC, and that Anann was working for the Resistance and Michael for the government... but I didn't have a clear idea of *what* each of them was doing. Now I've just worked that out, and it comes together really well. It's a constant job for Anann that also allows for a few scenes of high adrenaline, having to actually go out and see some action; it's a cool but decidedly creepy job that Michael is doing; and in both cases, it incorporates their already existing abilities and skills.

The downside is this: What Michael is doing is evil. Just plain evil. And, while Michael was never, EVER meant to be sweetness and light, and he was never meant to be a fully sympathetic character... you were still supposed to be able to care about him, understand him to an extent. More to the point, you were supposed to understand why Anann still cares about him, much as she might not want to.

But this might make him just plain too evil, so that if Anann gives into him and gets involved with him again, even when she's a prisoner in his apartment (the only way he could save her from execution)... then I think the reader will just go, "This girl is an idiot" and stop caring.

I devoted a lot of page time to developing Anann and Michael's relationship... from the uneasy truce, to the slowly developing friendship, to their becoming something totally undefined and forming a really deep understanding of the other, to their finally getting together and having a slowly forming romance. It's one of the few relationships I've written that I really like-- it really feels well-developed, well done, realistic. But it's all POINTLESS if, halfway through the book, Michael ceases to be a character you can care about, and the only way to make the reader respect Anann is to have her completely close him out, forever.

So I'm not sure what to do there.