It All Started When...

The Criminal Minds are discussing how our protagonists ended up in their various lines of work. For Alexandra Sabian, becoming an Enforcer with the Federal Bureau of Preternatural Investigation was a result of her father's murder.

It all started in 1968 when Alex, who was only five years old at the time, stumbled upon her father's staked and decapitated body in a cemetery near the Sabian family's Louisville, Kentucky home. Bernard Sabian was a popular history professor at the University of Louisville and meant the world to Alex. She every bit the "daddy's girl" and she, in turn, was his "princess." However, their bond stretched beyond that of father and daughter.

Alex and Bernard shared the unique ability to access the Shadowlands, a metaphysical "no man's land" between the physical and spiritual planes. At the time of Bernard's death, Alex's abilities were just beginning to truly manifest. It was because of her burgeoning psychic talents that she was able to sense and track his "presence" to the cemetery. The discovery of his body was understandably traumatic for her and a memory she's never been able to escape or erase from her mind.

Within days of Bernard's death, the vampire community had announced its existence to a stunned world and over the next seven years, they worked to gain both recognition and equal rights. The Sabians were used as the "poster children" of the vampire rights movement and touted the typical American family whose lives were shattered by violence because someone had uncovered Bernard's secret: he wasn't human.

Alex grew up in the wake of all this turmoil, but the memory of her beloved father's murder remained with her. She received a BA degree in history from University of Louisville in the spring of 1985, enrolled in the FBPI Academy that fall, and graduated the following summer. She was then assigned Varik Baudelaire as her mentor for the first few years of field work. They elected to remain partners when her mentorship was over in 1990, and eventually became lovers and engaged. Unfortunately, the relationship didn't last.

Since 2003, Alex has been the sole Enforcer assigned to police the vampire population of Jefferson, Mississippi.

And, that's how my protagonist ended up in her current line of work.

-Jeannie

Jeannie Holmes is the author of the Alexandra Sabian series and fears spiders, large bodies of water, and bad weather. She moved from the backwoods of southwestern Mississippi to the Alabama Gulf Coast where she now lives with her husband and four neurotic cats.