Welcome to the commentary for Vanquished, the final book in the Crusade trilogy! If you haven’t snagged your copy yet click here to see your buying options and get yours so you can read along!

Make sure to comment on each chapter commentary. At the end of the book one winner will be randomly selected to receive signed copies of two of my books. Good luck everyone!

Now, chapter one!

The books are each divided up into three sections (like Nancy and I also did for Wicked). The title of each section (Mórrígan for this one) is a mythological god or goddess of the dead. The vampires in these stories have their own religion and worship gods of the dead or the underworld and that’s why we’ve titled each section this way. The stanza at the beginning of each section that’s attributed to St. John of the Cross is a section from his Dark Night of the Soul.

I don’t like writing first person (for one thing it gives the reader a pretty good idea that the speaker is going to survive the story). However, there are times when first person makes something more real and more poignant. That’s why we use Jenn’s diary entries to start off roughly a third of the chapters. We get to see her personal thoughts and agony up close. But, you’ll notice, this diary was discovered in the ruins or ashes so you don’t know what happened to it or her.

Skye, the white witch, became one of my favorite characters. I felt for her because she truly didn’t want to hurt anyone. It was through her that we had addressed all those issues of how do you stand up and fight when you don’t want to kill. We got to do some complex philosophy with her character while at the same time making her one of the sweeter, more innocent members of Team Salamanca.

While Skye is being tortured by a dark witch, she keeps thinking about Holgar, her fighting partner who is also a werewolf. Holgar is by far my favorite character in the series. He’s a true alpha male type, but much funnier and kinder than you would expect. He is often the comedic humor that breaks up really dark scenes. He has had just as brutal a past as many of the others, but he has chosen to maintain a better outlook on life than say, Antonio. I always like to say that we’ve got a guy for everyone in this series. Funny, strong Holgar, brooding, romantic Antonio, and bad boy Jamie. Add to that mix dedicated, driven and compassionate Noah and you’ve got a fantastic assortment of personalities!

I enjoy writing the villain’s point of view and Aurora is especially interesting to write for. She’s a very evil character but also very tragic. She was a victim in life and in death and in many ways, even in her current vampiric state.

There really is a statue of Lucifer in Retiro Park in Madrid.

I loved the idea of the vampire funeral, seeing how they would mourn one of their own if they so chose to.