I'd killed him in the end, but revenge only makes things all better in the movies. In real life, once the villain is dead the trauma lives on inside the victims.

trust me, Anita, if you get dead, especially if he blames himself in any way, he will be a force of destruction looking for a place to be aimed. And he's blamed himself for introducing you to Olaf here from the get-go. If Olaf did to you what he's done to some of his other victims, Edward would drown the world in blood to erase those images.

I tried to picture a young, insecure Edward and couldn't, but it was nice to know that once he'd been a boy. Sometimes it felt like Edward had sprung full grown from the head of some violent deity,like a vicious version of Athena.

My writing style is very sensual, as in sensory detail

He ordered food with a childlike glee and watched me eat, tasting it as I did. In private he'd roll on his back like a cat, hands pressed to his mouth as if trying to drain every taste. It was the only thing he did that was cute. He was gorgeous, sensual, but rarely cute. - Anita Blake about Jean-Claude

It was as if the power and loneliness of the vampires' world had combined with the group oriented puppy-pile world of the shapeshifters and made something new.

My characters surprise me constantly. My characters are like my friends - I can give them advice, but they don't have to take it. If your characters are real, then they surprise you, just like real people