Character Focus with Rita A. Rubin

A Ballad for Slayers and Monsters just released YESTERDAY and I’m so pleased to have the wonderful author Rita A. Rubin here with me to celebrate in this latest edition of Character Focus!

First off, introduce us to your girls and tell us a little about them!

Kas and Claudia are the two main protagonists from A Ballad for Slayers & Monsters. Kas is a monster slayer and Claudia is a half-vampire. When they first meet, they can’t stand each other, but after forming a reluctant alliance growing closer on their journey, they become, as the historians would say, very good friends.

Hmm, yes, a true case of the Gal Pals. 😌 And what was the moment Kas decided to become a Slayer and hunt monsters for a living?

Like all good stories, Kas’s journey into monster slaying started when her family was killed by monsters. Newly orphaned, she crosses paths with a Slayer named Tsurra and decides hunting monsters like the ones who killed her family is just what she wants to do with her life.

Moment of silence for the family, doomed by the narrative… Okay, moment’s over, and I am dying to know how Claudia befriended her wolf companion. Care to share?

Absolutely! Claudia rescued Wolf from some hunters when he was a pup. She took care of him until he was old enough for her to try releasing him back into the wild. I say try, because no matter how much she encouraged him to leave, he just kept coming back to her.

Aw! That’s love, right there 🥺 Speaking of love, this story does include an element of romance. How would you describe Kas and Claudia’s relationship dynamic, and does it change drastically over the course of the book?

When Kas and Claudia first meet, their relationship is one of mutual dislike. Kas, because she hates all monsters, especially vampyrics, and Claudia, because she can’t stand her attitude. It’s safe to say that their feelings do change drastically over the course of the book. They go from these feelings of barely contained animosity to becoming inseparable and the love of each other's lives.

I can’t wait to see how things develop between them myself. What was the most challenging part about developing them as characters?

The most challenging part for me was developing them in a way that would make sense to the reader that Kas and Claudia would eventually fall in love despite their differences and the fact that they start off their story hating each other. Kas is a Slayer who kills monsters and Claudia is a half-monster herself, so it makes sense why they wouldn’t like each other. What doesn’t immediately make sense is how they could end up falling in love. And of course I wanted their journey from hate to love to feel organic and not out of character for either of them. Especially Kas, who really hates monsters for what they did to her family.

I can imagine the work you must’ve put into it! What’s your earliest memory of Kas?

Kas first came into my mind as just a red-haired monster slayer back in 2019 for a short story I had to write a for a creative writing class. The first sentence I wrote for her was describing her riding her horse along an open road with long flame-red hair flying behind her. Characters can go through a lot of changes between a story’s early and final stages.

They certainly can. I’d love to hear more about how they changed between their original and current iterations 👀

When I first came up with Claudia’s character, instead of being a half-vampire, she was a sorcerer, with some once in a generation special power that was a central plot in the very first draft I wrote. Kas went from being born into a monster slaying family and being trained to hunt monsters since her earliest memories, to being a coddled daughter of a wealthy family who only became a Slayer because her family was killed by monsters. Kas was also much more stoic in those early days. Very Henry Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia coded.

Love it! It’s so fascinating to see where characters started. Now, Kas may have lost her family, but does she have any other close companions in her life?

When Kas’s family died, the one who found her afterward was Tsurra. She ushered Kas into the life of monster slaying, and took a vested interest in her training. Over the years, the two of them bonded and now have a something like a mother/daughter relationship.

Aww, I’m glad she has someone like that to lean on. Do Kas and Claudia have any places of refuge?

Kas and Claudia’s refuge is each other :)

CORNY, I’m here for it. On the subject of places: where did the girls grow up?

Kas spent her early childhood on her family’s estate in Veldenier, and after that training at the Slayer’s Keep and sneaking off to the nearby town. Claudia lived in a little farming village called Trulio with her father until she was forced to live in an old castle that belonged to her mother’s vampyric clan.

Castles are great and all, but not when forced upon you! 😩 Okay, here’s a fun one to wrap things up: If these two were animals, what kind would they be?

If Claudia was an animal, I think she would be an arctic fox and Kas would be a tiger.

Perfect! Now I know what animal symbolism to include if I ever find the chance the draw them (and goddamn, do I want to). 😉 Thank you so much for joining me, Rita! I cannot wait to meet Kas and Claudia in the pages of A Ballad for Slayers and Monsters.

If you enjoyed this interview, go treat yourself to this brand spankin’ new release!