The Spectral Advocate author commentary continues this week with a look at Megan Daniels, the sinister threat behind the Specter in the novel. Whoops. Guess I should have led with the SPOILER WARNING!

Building the threat of Megan Daniels

Figuring out the villain for a story is one of the pure joys of writing. There are few tasks more gratifying than developing someone multi-faceted, yet truly twisted at heart. With Spectral Advocate, I knew the physical threat would always be the Specter. Nothing would come close to that level of terror.

But I wanted to try anyway.

On a purely psychological level, I wanted Megan Daniels to be a totally sympathetic character who simply goes too far. We’ve all been pushed into a corner, but how often do we push back to the point of, oh, let’s say, murder? (Don’t answer that, you’ll only incriminate yourself!)

Megan has a legit beef with Abigail Winslow/Hunt. She abandoned Megan’s husband the night of his death. If she had been present, they both might be dead, sure, but there was always the chance of their survival as well.

The first interaction

It’s still a favorite scene of mine in the book. Okay, there are quite a few in this one (the comic book store, of course, as well as the battle in Ben’s bedroom, to name a couple) but introducing Megan Daniels was a challenge I enjoyed. She needed to exude innocence and did so by leaning on the widow aspect of her life. She yearns for her husband, but doesn’t come off as needy, simply lonely due to the tragedy of Steven’s death.

I was worried about this scene. The reason was simple: I didn’t have another one with a different potential killer. Everything fell on Megan Daniels, and I was worried people would see right through the chapter and know she was the killer.

Every draft brought with it more desire to layer in red herrings. A boss, a co-worker, a secret lover, yet everything felt like a distraction from the main plot. Her inability to let go of the past mirrored that of both Cal and Ben, which I felt was more crucial to explore than anything else in the novel.

After the usual back and forth with myself, I left it alone and hoped no one saw through to the end too quickly.

Megan Daniels revealed

I’ve listed a couple favorite scenes in the book already, but the end of Chapter Twenty-Three remains one of the best images in the entire season. I still close my eyes and see Megan’s dead eyes staring at Ben and Cal, while pointing toward the door with her husband’s ghost hovering overhead.

“Show our guests out, would you, dear?”

It still brings me chills.

Influences

I might have mentioned this in the past, but of all Peter Jackson’s incredible work on the screen, my favorite film of his remains The Frighteners.

Jeffrey Combs, Michael J. Fox, Jake Busey, Dee Wallace, and so many other incredible talents worked on this movie. Dee Wallace, especially, helped bring Megan Daniels to life in Spectral Advocate. Not so much for the crazed mania she portrayed as Patricia Bradley, but with how attached she remained to Johnny Bartlett. They could not be apart, and that aspect I felt was key for Megan in Spectral Advocate.

It’s a freaking phenomenal movie. I might be the only one on the planet that thinks so. (Or so my wife believes…) You should check it out.

Next:

The never-before-seen bonus story I wrote back in 2015 that delves into Cal Cooper’s visit to Bethesda.

Welcome back to another look at Spectral Advocate. As with the other author commentary pieces, there will be spoilers so watch out! This time I’m talking about the subplot threads in the book and the constantly changing team dynamics.

Team Dynamics

I’ve always said I like to play with the team when it comes to the DSA. For me, there is nothing more fun than seeing how the main cast handles their interactions with each other and with the randoms they come across. It is infinitely more satisfying to write a Lincoln/Sullivan exchange than yet another briefing from Zac to the entire department, because those types of exchanges don’t occur regularly, so they have to pack a lot of punch.

In my mind, I’ve always viewed the DSA as starring Ben Riley and Morgan Dunleavy. Everyone else is a supporting character behind these two leads. They are my Mulder and Scully. Everything centers around them.

Looking back on Season One, I find it funny to see that, though they might be my leads for the DSA, they really weren’t together a whole helluva lot. My personal memory imagined them together constantly, yet reading through the first season, only Promethean so far has had the two of them as primaries on a case.

It’s weird how the mind remembers things.

This was, of course, by design to some extent. In The Bridge, I needed the cast isolated and dealing with their own problems. Spectral Advocate, though, opened the door for Ben to feed off someone new. (Not to mention someTHING new as discussed last time.) I thought it was important, again, to keep Ben isolated especially in light of Abigail Winslow’s clear deception with the DSA. She was brought in to spy on Ben, but he couldn’t possibly know by whom.

That level of distrust made it easier for him to want to handle things solo.

But what about Morgan?

I’m not going to delve into her sexy time with Zac. (That’s for a different forum.)

Her time tracking down Lincoln, though, is something I thought was very important to develop for the series. Lincoln, since Promethean, has been M.I.A. in his search for the Witness. For me, subplots work best when there are touchstones to the main plot and/or main cast. You’ll see that again during Season Two, Book Three.

Bringing Lincoln and Morgan together again cemented the importance of his search and everything he had learned up to that point. He is carrying this massive weight, knowing what the Witness has seen with the DSA and the threat against them. Instead of questioning that knowledge, Lincoln hangs onto it like a lifeline.

Motivation was the key.

His motivation comes from grief over Ruth’s loss.

Morgan’s comes from somewhere else completely. Her rage at the Witness for Bellbrook puts her at odds with Lincoln immediately, something she never thought possible.

I really wanted to pull at the DSA cast. With each book, I want them questioning everything, even themselves. That’s where the true heart of the series comes from–through these relentless tests and situations no one could possibly understand.

Morgan, blinded by rage for the Witness’ crimes, can’t support Lincoln’s decisions. And Lincoln, lost to grief, can’t see any other way to move forward. The Witness is his only path in his eyes. That separation really sold the tension between them in the junkyard scenes.

Unintended consequences

Every choice needs weight. The scenes developed in these subplots were opportunities to give the cast a chance at redemption and to show the reader why some didn’t take that chance.

Building these moments, layering in the tension and the conflict behind the main plot, are some of my fondest memories from Season One. I wracked my brain with each one, wanting more and more from the characters, and they absolutely delivered.