Sin and Redemption

One of the things we writers talk about and worry about and maybe even obsess about is the idea of having a theme in our work. It’s a little different from branding and perhaps even more important.

When I first learned about theme, I sat down and thought about the bulk of my work and realized that I do have an underlying theme to my work. It’s Redemption – or maybe more accurately, Sin and Redemption.

I like characters who have something to atone for, real or imagined, big or small, they have some mistake to fix, some hurt they need to make up for before they can truly be happy. It isn’t always my main character either – in Conjured in Flames, my first novel, there was Graciela, the “alien” sorceress. She was bad to the bone, but she did have a moment of clarity where readers learn a little bit about why she was bad and hopefully feel a little bit sorry for her.

In Bonfire of the Vampires my heroine, Abby, is a vampire killer [note I don’t use the word slayer]. She’s forced into it as a means of survival. In the sequel, Fresh Blood, it’s my heroine’s sister, the misguided Elena Talbot who needs redemption. Her sins against the heroine, her twin sister Erica, are too numerous to count.

In Wolfsbane: Aspect of the Wolf, hero Daniel must atone for his attempt to run Emilie’s business out of town. In The Soul Jar, Chance struggles to get Bree to forgive him for leaving her and in The Rebound Guy, Lauren deals with her tremendous guilt over using her best friend Eric as an emotional balm when her boyfriend cheats on her.





This theme occurs in most, though not all of my stories and hopefully it’s a salable point. I’m the writer who writes about forgiveness, earning it from others and from ourselves, and about overcoming the bad you’ve done to make good and move on.

If you’re a writer, what is your theme? If you’re a reader, do you find you look for books with particular themes or can you identify the theme of your favorite author?