It’s time for me to make a confession: I hate writing villains. As an author who delights in heists and capers and romantic suspense-y twists, you’d think nothing would make me happier than to create a big, bad villain for the hero and heroine to take down. Good triumphs over evil! Love rules the day! Happily ever after for all! While I do love a good HEA and the thought of a bad guy getting his due, this is a part of the storytelling process I struggle with quite a bit. Usually, it’s because I grow to love all my characters too much—even the dastardly ones. (Most of the time, I especially love the dastardly ones.) I like to think this is a natural side effect of writing realistic, compelling villains. Instead of just being an incarnation of evil, they have motives and feelings and flaws, are three-dimensional characters in their own right. In fact, every villain should be the hero of his own story…it’s just that this particular book isn’t his story. Yet. It’s not just my own books I feel this way about, either. Some of my favorite book, movie, and TV characters of all time rest on…