Healing, Anthrax, and Avoiding the Dreaded "Mary Sue" (and an awesome picture, just for fun)

One of my main character used to be a full-blown, sickly-sweet "Mary Sue." I admit it. She was so bad she made my mom cringe, and my mom usually likes what I write, even when I don't! Once she pointed that out to me I rewrote the story trying to fix that, but in my latest draft I came across a problem that could potentially make her look that way again, which is what today's blog post is about.

See, at one point in the story, Éadra is tasked with healing three patients in Erron's infirmary, and I felt it was important that she fail this time. Also, the disease had to at least appear to be very contagious; the other healers had to be scared enough to refuse to treat the patients for Éadra to have to heal them. This presented me with a problem; if the disease was highly contagious and she couldn't cure it, she would likely catch it and die from it. This would not work at all for my story! However, the situation was too important for me to just drop it. I could just have her not catch it, but without a good reason for it I was afraid this would send her straight back into Mary Sue territory, making her too perfect and special to ever get sick. Through research I finally hit upon a solution, but I couldn't make the reasoning clear in my book, so I will lay it out here. Perhaps someone with greater medical knowledge can correct me if my reasoning is too faulty :) .

I discovered that anthrax was around in the Middle Ages. From what I gathered, it's a hard-to-kill spore but not airborn. So, I made the original patient a tanner who tanned an infected cow skin. The spores got on his clothes, so both the healer and the elf who washed those clothes had direct contact with the spores and came down with the disease as well. This would make it appear to be highly contagious at first, but by the time Éadra gets there, the remaining spores are all the patients' bodies (the rest having been tossed away with the laundry water). She has no direct contact with the spores and so doesn't get sick.

So, thoughts? Is my logic sound, or at least sound enough that any flaws can be chalked up to artistic license?


In other news, my awesome sister-in-law is going to be my artist, and has made me my first picture for the story. It will be part of a presentation on kickstarter, helping me fund-raise to get this book out there! Take a look!

Finally, a decent picture on my blog!!!