One of the things I love about writing is how plots and characters tend to come alive after a while and go in exciting new directions and evolve into things I never planned. In Deep Embrace the character of Scylla has done just that. She was meant to be a plot device but from her first scene she came off as sad and tortured. Scylla is a woman who has the lower body of an octopus with six wolf heads ringing her waist. In Deep Embrace her upper body is quite beautiful. I see her as having flawless white skin, black hair that goes down to her feet and green eyes. She was turned into a sea monster after she rejected the advances of a God. Ever since then she has taken to living under the ocean to get away from hordes of angry mortals who want nothing more than to cut her head off because they think she is a monster who eats children.
Scylla does not want to harm anyone but is willing to do anything to defend herself including killing men, women and children, if they attack her first. So, in other words, if you send your battle ship in her direction or dare to enter her cave, man oh man will she kick your butt.
I am seriously considering making my next romantic fantasy book about her. She has a fascinating background and will be so much fun to write with her temper and emotional insecuries. Scylla knows she will have a soul mate one day. He will be a mortal man. She fears he will never accept her or worse that he will be so frightened and disgusted by her appearance that he will try to kill her. The last thing in the world she wants to do is to be forced to kill her own soul mate.
If I do her book it will be a bit like Beauty and the Beast only the beast will be the woman. I guess that makes the man the beauty, huh? Another reason why I want to do her story is I want to explore the character of her sister as well. Her sister is represented as a whirlpool in the myths. I have this idea of her being a victim just like Scylla. She was once a beautiful woman too but got turned into a whirlpool by an angry God after rejecting him. I have this image in my head of Scylla looking down into a whirlpool and seeing the reflection of her sister's face in it.
The story will be quite sad in alot of parts. Obviously, in the end, the curse on Scylla will be broken by her soul mate, I don't know how yet but it will probably involve him going after the God who originally cast it. If the story goes well I will probably go on to do one about Scylla's sister afterwards.
Why am I thinking about doing a story about Scylla? I want to start writing less stand aloen stories. I have really enjoyed writing Deep Embrace and had the idea to write some stories about Perse's sister's to create some sort of series. But then I thought about Scylla and decided she would be more interesting. I thought about connecting Deep Embrace and the Scylla story through the word "Deep" in the titles but after a brain storming session I decided that would be too difficult.
So I am planning on possibly starting a series of romantic fantasties about the Oceanids/Sea Gods and Goddesses. I will still do other stand alones and maybe do series about other types of Gods. At the moment though I think I will stay and prance around in the ocean.
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