Who is Emily Voss? 

Emily’s deeply, deeply flawed. Everything she is, everything she knows, and all of her reactions are the product of the mistakes she’s made in the past, and she’s constantly trying to move forward, despite a heavy burden of regret and remorse. 

She drinks more whisky than is probably good for her, and generally doesn’t mix well with others. She’s a loner and – to the outside observer – looks like she’s been hardened by a difficult life. They wouldn’t be too far from the truth. 

In the prologue, A First Time for Everything, you saw she reacts to danger: She steps towards it. 

In her youth, she accidentally summoned a demon which she fears she set loose on the world, and now she’s dedicated her life to exorcism so she can find it and undo the damage she wrought. 

Earned Competence 

I didn’t want to make Emily a special snowflake. Chosen from birth, daughter of a powerful witch, inheritor of infinite power, fated to be the guardian of heaven-only-knows-what. Destined for greatness.  

I don’t like that approach. 

It robs a character of agency because they have to spend the rest of the book living up to the expectations set at the outset. 

Emily is the opposite. Formerly naïve, dangerously impulsive and on a mission of her own making. But self-aware enough to see how she looks to the rest of the world. 

You can glimpse her self-awareness in a couple of exchanges in the book, for example when she first meets one of her clients: 

“You come highly recommended, Miss Voss. Ah…” 

“You were expecting someone different. I know. I get that a lot.” 

“Well, perhaps not so much different as, ah, older.” 

I get that a lot too, although I’d assumed it was the piercing, hairstyle, shredded jeans and leather jacket that had put off the conservative and homely owner of this decrepit hotel. That, and that I’m a woman. 

Everything she knows, everything she’s learned, has been earned. Either though deep research or hard experience.  

The Drawback of her Gift 

Emily’s gift is an ability to see or sense magic and/or demons, but it comes at a cost. It alienates them from society, since what they see would make them crazy in the eyes of everyone else. 

The consequences of being awakened tend to make us introverts, loners and generally antisocial, so we share very little with each other. There are no reliable texts, few firsthand accounts, and we tend to die young. 

In short, her path to power and to redemption is one she feels she has to walk alone, in part because it’s hard to forge connections with people who think you’re a con artist or worse, but also because she feels she has to atone for her past mistakes. 

A Warped Sense of Right and Wrong 

Emily exorcises demons for a living, but actual possessions are rare. 

Most of the time she’s hired, there’s nothing to exorcise. She’s taking money from wealthy, ignorant clients for what amounts to a placebo. She’s got rent to pay, so she compromises her ethics and takes the money anyway. 

Every time, she has to wrestle with her conscience. She drinks to assuage the guilt and hides behind gallows humor. 

This is who Emily is when Past Mistakes begins: competent, isolated, morally compromised, carrying the weight of a terrible mistake she made years ago, trying to atone for it one exorcism at a time. 

Then she figures out what really happened all those years ago, and everything gets worse. 

Nick 

Find out more about Emily Voss on my website: http://nicklavitz.com.

PS. Who’s your favourite “competent professional” female protagonist in fiction? Someone who earned their skills rather than being born special?