Besides a certain princeling, most of my close POVs I write are women. But as Demon Spring came to me, Jack Grenard (first called Ben) was very clearly a dude. I had a lot of ideas for him, a lot of things I wanted to play with. In the end, I wrote a character who makes strides forward, stumbles, falls, and gets back up again.
Jackson George Grenard is about twenty-seven, and has been a Division agent since graduating from the Academy for Demon Management in Denver at eighteen. He can be described as two different people: Before Sara and After.
Before Sara
Before Sara, Jack was a somewhat cocky, smart, talented young man with something of a hero complex. His family had been demon hunters since 200 A.D. in Germany, and his grandfather is the actual US representative on the Council of Fifteen. Jack’s father is an aide to another councilman, and it was expected that Jack would follow in the same footsteps. Instead, he and Cam decided to take low-level jobs in the field. For Jack, it was about helping people.
Jack had known Sara through Cam since his freshman year at the Academy, but really took a shine to her his junior year at the Academy. By then, he’d been building something of a playboy reputation, and Cam was not willing to let him at her little sister. So he changed, she gave her blessing, and then they all moved to D.C. to start a life.
His hero complex continued to show itself as he and Cam took on difficult cases. Cam, ambitiously, wanted to become director. Jack just wanted the feel-good of helping people. Unfortunately, that’s what gets Sara killed.
After Sara
The Jack we meet in Resurgence is a different man. It’s as if his candle has been blown out. Immediately following Sara’s death, he transfers to accounting. But after three years, Cam decides he’s done with that and forces him down to Atlanta to join her. Jack, unable to make his own decisions still, agrees.
Cam’s convinced that things will continue as usual, but it’s not long before she begins to see Jack isn’t the same man. He’s forgetful, he’s unsure of himself. He almost lets himself get suckered in by an eloko demon. He begins to second-guess the brilliance of coming back to work until a chance encounter with La Colibrí changes everything.
For some reason, she plucks his wounded male heartstrings. She breezes in mysteriously, clearly a woman who needs no help, yet she’s running scared from something. And that’s when we start to se the beginnings of the New Jack–perhaps a little more cautious, but still nurturing that hero complex.
Buy the first book in the Demon Spring trilogy
Demon hunter Jack Grenard’s life changed three years ago when his wife was brutally murdered by the very demons he’d been hunting. At the urging of his partner Cam Macarro, he’s starting a new life in Atlanta, hoping he’ll find the man he used to be. But on a routine hunt, they come across a new type of demon–one that saves instead of kills.
Meanwhile, demons across Atlanta are preparing for the quadrennial uprising of their Underworld brethren. Worse yet, there’s a rumor the so-called king of the demons, Bael, will appear for the first time in over a century. Jack and Cam must uncover the truth about the mystery woman before all hell–literally–breaks loose.
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