Blogging A to Z Challenge: J is for Jealousy

The A to Z challenge is a challenge in which bloggers post every day during the entire month, and each day has a post starting with a different letter of the alphabet. The first day, the post features “A”, the second day “B”, and so on. It’s much better explained on the Blogging from A to Z website, so I’ll just refer you there.

A lot of times, my books deal with jealousy. I’m not sure if it’s because I like talking about the emotion, or if it’s because it’s one of the most realistic traits a character can have, but it appears in a lot of my books. You could say that the whole plot of Fractured, my debut YA novel, relied on jealousy, on how one character felt envious for another, and that got the ball rolling. The sequel, Reflected, plays with the feeling even more, putting in perspective why each of the main characters would be jealous of the other. It’s the driving force behind at least one of the character’s actions, and it’s interesting to see what jealousy can make people do.

In the Angel of Death series, I use jealousy a lot less often. There’s only one character for who jealousy will become a personality trait, and that’s not even that obvious in the first book. A lot of my short stories deal with people who are jealous, or who others are jealous from. Since my short stories are mostly dark fiction, jealousy can have disastrous consequences there.

But thinking about this made me wonder why it’s such a prominent feature in my books. I’m not a jealous person – not often, at least. Sometimes I do get a little jealous, but not to the point where I’d hurt people over it, or anything. But it’s such a human thing, to be jealous of others, to be envious of others.