Guest post: Know Thine Enemy by Rosalie Stanton

Rosalie Stanton about her character Izzie Bennett of Know Thine Enemy!

Izzie Bennett never made things easy. Not for her friend, Zack Wright, not for the hero, Ryker, and not for me, her creator. Getting her to talk was extraordinarily difficult, and I suppose I understand why. Her story wasn’t one she liked sharing with anyone, even those who already knew it. She was also a different sort of demon hunter, which made understanding her motives difficult.

Ultimately, though, Izzie is a construct of those events that piece together her life before the book’s first words. Everyone is shaped by their past in one way or another, yet Izzie understood, perhaps without realizing it, how exercising personal choice greatly affects the path one’s life takes. Her upbringing was a harsh one, her father a disgraced priest who viewed her as the embodiment of his failure. Harrison Bennett only took Izzie under his wing to seek penance for his transgressions, but no one policed the way he raised her. All women, in his opinion, were Satan’s whores, sent to tempt the righteous into sexual sin. Since Izzie was born a girl and existed only as a byproduct of Harrison’s sexual impurity, he took this as a sign he was on the right path. When his madness graduated to hallucinations and delusions of grandeur, it was only a matter of time before Harrison determined Izzie’s role in his life was more than a reminder of his failures. She, herself, was one of the devil’s soldiers, which meant it was up to him to send her back to Hell.

Not only did Izzie’s upbringing makes up a large part of who she is, it more importantly defined who she doesn’t want to be. She grew up with a perfect example of what happens to people who allow their fears to control their lives, and especially what happens when one begins seeing demons everywhere. It wasn’t until Izzie met Zack Wright, who became her mentor, that she realized demons themselves were real…just not the sort of real her father always imagined. Wright, himself, had been bruised by past wounds. His wife and unborn child were brutalized and murdered by a deranged vampire, which in turn constructed another in a long line of demon hunters whose missions were inspired by personal tragedy. Yet where Wright sees a villain behind every set of fangs, Izzie has learned to abstain from drawing conclusions.

Ultimately, the difference between right and wrong comes down to what mistakes a person is willing to repeat. Izzie fought her deranged father for her own right to live, and after years of self-reliance, found herself again on the warpath of demon hunting. Wright might not carry Harrison’s madness, but he certainly carried his grudge. It was the same life with the added benefit of not being the victim.

In this sense, not losing her life in childhood only made it easier for others to hold her hostage, even if they don’t realize it. Wright used her as a personal tool with which to exact vengeance. Izzie learned the hard way to take life’s lessons with a grain of salt. The existence of demons, vampires, and other things that go bump in the night doesn’t necessarily mean her father’s conclusions were sound. And when she meets a vampire for the first time, a vampire as intrigued by her as she is by him, the weak pillars of her borrowed convictions shatter.

Strength for Izzie is beyond physical. Her journey contains numerous twists and turns; her involvement with the vampire Ryker lands her in the custody of a governmental agency who aspires to learn more about any manner of creature thought only to exist in fable. She and Ryker must learn to overcome their personal ghosts and rely on one another for survival. Strength in this case is the power of trust, self-reliance, and learning how to break from a path of self-destruction.

Strength is realizing the world is built in more colors than black and white, and not allowing oneself to shoulder someone else’s pain to the extent where it becomes one’s own. It’s about discovering one’s own views and having the stones to walk away from toxic relationships.

It’s about having the courage to fall in love when you don’t believe love can exist.

The thing about Izzie, speaking as her creator, was she spent most of her life as the device used by others. Be it her father, Harrison, or her mentor, Zack Wright. Izzie had a working idea of who she was when the story opened, but she didn’t trust herself to stand on her own. After all, it’s hard to know who you are when your identity has relied so much on what others needed or wanted you to be. Meeting Ryker was a part of her graduation from victim, but it was her fight for self-discovery that made her one of my favorite characters to write.

Getting to know Izzie took the length of the book for me. And I think one of the reasons she resisted me so long, even as her creator, was she knew I was using her, too.

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Blurb of Know Thine Enemy by Rosalie Stanton

He’s a vampire with a story. She’s a woman with a past.
The second Ryker spots the girl with midnight hair, he knows there’s more to her than meets the eye. She boasts the title of vampire hunter, but something’s off, something’s missing, and that something pulls him close…until backing off isn’t an option.

For years, Izzie has lived for the night, outrunning ghosts from home that seem to find her wherever she lands. Alongside her friend and mentor, who rescued her when she was at her lowest, she destroys creatures she once thought couldn’t exist. But Izzie doesn’t have what she needs to be her best, and doesn’t know if she ever will…or if the life she has is the one she wants.

When a shadow from Ryker’s former life surfaces to collect a forgotten debt, vampire and hunter are thrust together in a strange world of eroticism and servitude. They must trust each other if they mean to escape, but when trust turns into something more, the real enemy becomes harder and harder to pick out.