I thought I’d talk a little bit about Daniel Haws, the hero from my July 2010 book, INSATIABLE!

Daniel is a man who understands duty and honor. He understands the price to be paid for the bigger picture, the sacrifices people must make for the greater good and he understands how what he does tempts the darkness within people.

He’s a man who believes in what he does. He’s a man who also finds himself conflicted from time to time when working for the greater good, especially when innocent people may be caught in the middle of something they can’t control or protect themselves from.

I love Daniel. He’s a good man, but he’s not innocent. He’s an assassin. He kills people and he knows the price for what he does. And yet, he does it because it needs to be done. I love that moral ambiguity at the personal level! It’s so much fun to write and I do hope I can do him justice with this book.

Here’s a very small excerpt from the book (I’m still writing it so it’s rough and uber sneaky peeky!)

They settled in the comfortable waiting area, opening the files to read the information. A silent but quite lovely woman brought out cool drinks and some light food before disappearing again. Sipping the fruit juice, Daniel sighed inwardly as he read, pretending to wait patiently. Patience was not one of his strongest traits, but he was trained to wait. Sitting beside him, his friend and fellow operative, Andrei did have patience, though it wasn’t necessarily what others would perceive as a virtue. Andrei could wait, utterly still, for hours until an opportunity to take out a target presented itself. And he did it with clarity, calm and what at first glance might seem like enjoyment.

Daniel knew better of course. Andrei did not enjoy killing, but he did it well and he did it for a cause he believed in and that was more than enough for Daniel. The only time this sort of thing concerned Daniel was when his people enjoyed it, lost the ability to draw lines they did not cross. Over the years he’d been with Phantom Corps, he’d known a few. And since he’d been elevated to a higher rank and he stood second in line to Ellis, he’d had to send a small group away to get treatment and to excise them from their ranks. It was a hard choice, but no man should love to kill another, even when it was deserved.

It was easy for the darkness to gain a foothold in a man’s soul. Easy when all you saw were the most vile things out there. Humanity kept your soul intact. To lose that meant losing the judgment that kept you on the right side of the law and turned you into a vigilante or worse, a murderer. At times that line was thin, the merest breadth away from falling, but what mattered were the choices made in the very end.

Be sure to check out the other Snippeters!
Eliza Gayle
Jody Wallace
Lauren Dane
McKenna Jeffries
Michelle Pillow
Moira Rogers
Shelley Munro
Taige Crenshaw
Victoria Janssen
Vivian Arend
Mark Henry
Leah Braemel