Character Building

posted by Loucinda McGary aka Aunty Cindy

Some of the questions I'm most often asked by readers and aspiring writers are about my characters. Specifically, how do you come up with them and are they based on real people? So without further adieu:

HOW DO YOU COME UP WITH YOUR CHARACTERS?

I don’t come up with my characters so much as they come up to me!

My characters tend to arrive in my imagination fully intact, complete with their first, middle, and last names. Though I will admit, I changed my hero of The Treasures of Venice, Keirnan Fitzgerald’s middle name. My First Reader, whom I've known for over 30 years, told me she’d always been very fond of the name Sean. So in deference to her, I changed his name from Keirnan Padriag Fitzgerald to Keirnan Sean Fitzgerald. Luckily he didn’t mind.

When my characters arrive, they tend to tell me all kinds of things about themselves. Quite handy, though I know it sounds bizarre to people who don't write. We writers are very possessive about their characters. We spend a lot of time with them (some of it very intimate!) and they become very real to us. In essence, they are all ‘our babies.’ Most writers know many, many more things about their characters than ever appears on the pages of the book.

ARE YOUR CHARACTERS BASED ON REAL PEOPLE?

Well… yes and no. Since these are my babies, there’s a little bit of me in all my characters! Sometimes there’s a little bit of people I know, or have met, or read about…

So far, the character I’ve written who is the most like me, is the hero’s bossy older sister in The Wild Sight. When my own sister read the book for the first time, she said she cracked up because it was so obvious to her that Doreen was based on me.

I also named three secondary characters in The Wild Sight after my son and two of my nieces. They all got a laugh out of it. And a secondary character in The Treasures of Venice is named and modeled after a good friend of mine who happens to have a cool Italian name. She was very flattered, but we'll see what she says after she reads the entire book.

Also be careful what you wish for! I do write romantic suspense after all.

My niece’s husband wanted me to name a character after him, so I did, in my current work-in-progress, The Wild Irish Sea. Unfortunately, his namesake character meets a rather nasty end in the first four pages of the story! SHHHH! He doesn’t know yet!

And YES! I do have “models” for the main characters. When my characters arrive in my imagination, I usually have a pretty good ‘picture’ of what they look like. I usually go on an internet search for find pictures of celebrities to match those pictures in my head. A tough job, but somebody's gotta do it. All in the name of ‘visual inspiration’ of course!

I don’t always widely broadcast who provides my visual inspiration, because I know that as a reader, I like to have my own ‘picture’ of the characters when I read. That was one of my biggest fears when I went to see The Lord of the Rings movies. I loved those characters so much and I was just sure the actors cast in the roles were not going to live up to the images I’d carried in my head all these years. I must admit that except for a preponderance of pointy ears (Tolkien never described any of his characters as having pointed or otherwise unusual ears!), I was very pleased with almost every major cast member. Okay, I was especially pleased with Aragorn.

Now it's your turn! If you are a writer, how do you come up with your characters? Are they based on real people? And if you are a reader, do you like to know who served as the authors 'visual inspiration' for a character? Or do your prefer to find your own models? For everyone, have you ever had a favorite book turned into a movie and the actors were totally right or totally wrong?

Happy 4th of July

Go out and enjoy the day with your families--I know I will be!

"Unless our conception of patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection and the real interest of the nation." Jane Addams

DC or BUST!!!!

The next blog that I post here on Casablanca Authors will be the Sunday following the Romance Writers of America's national conference in Washington, DC. I'll be on my way home that day, but I know that on Saturday night I'll be pecking away at my laptop, frantically trying to get a post up before I go to bed.

It's going to be an interesting trip. Not only have I never flown anywhere by myself, but I haven't been to DC since I was about eight years old. I went to a big nursing conference in Atlanta once, but aside from that, I've never been to anything approaching the scale of this event, and this will also be my first time ever for a writer's conference of any kind. I have met a few authors in person--the May meeting of the INRWA was my first--and I felt very much like a newbie and didn't know ANYONE!

But this will be different. I've gotten to know a lot of the Casa Babes via the blogs and e-mail, and I'm looking forward to meeting all of you in person. I don't believe that any pen pals in years past could possibly have gotten closer than those of us who have communicated via the Internet. The funny thing is, I've never even spoken with most of you on the phone. In fact, I think Deb and Danielle are the only ones. Strange times we live in, huh? I'll be meeting them for the first time, too. I've at least seen pictures, so I think I'll recognize everyone, but though I have heard all of your "voices" in print, it's going to be very odd hearing your actual voices for the first time.


Another difference between this and that AACN nursing conference (which was oh, so many years ago!) is that we get to dress up! When I went with my nursing buddies to Nashville earlier this year, we went to a couple of outlet malls and they got me in a dressing room and started bringing me clothes that I would never have picked off the rack myself. And of course they told the salesladies all about my books and the upcoming event, and they joined in the fun, too. I normally wear blue all the time (blue jeans, blue scrubs, blue T-shirts, and, yes, even blue nightgowns!) and I NEVER dress up, but I came away with clothes that stick out in my closet like sore thumbs. Along with the pervasive blue, there are now splashes of yellow and green and silver. I wore one of the outfits to a wedding recently and actually felt pretty spiffy for a change.




















Shoes were another difficulty. I have some foot problems and normally only wear running/walking shoes (from the MEN'S department!) and I haven't had a pair of heels on in ages. However, I managed to find some dress shoes that actually fit (thanks to the Internet!) and hopefully I won't break my neck in them.

Oh, rats! That reminds me. . . pantyhose. I'm going to have to buy some pantyhose before I go--something else I haven't done in at least ten years.

God help me!

Pop culture passes

by Mary Margret Daughtridge

It's been a strange week. Anyone who has watched any news at all knows there's been a huge turnover in popular culture icons. From the sublime Farrah Fawcett to the ridiculous Billy Mays to the bizarre Michael Jackson.




Billy Mays' black bearded face smiling molar to molar on the screen was enough to make me reach for the mute button. I often wondered about the gadgets, glue, and gimmicky gee-gaws he hawked. Does anyone buy squares of cloth or pieces of plastic for $19.95? They must have, or he wouldn't have come back as tenaciously as crab grass.

Still, he influenced popular culture. A friend and I have a running joke that begins "BUT WAIT!"











Farah Fawcett had a hairstyle that defined a generation. Though she did other things, I can't actually recall ever seeing her in anything except Charlie's Angels. I wonder if she will become like Clara Bow of whom I know nothing except that she gave the world "bee stung" lips.














And then there's Michael Jackson. There's almost nothing to say about him. It's like he was the weirdest person in the world, and then he got weirder. I get the feeling one isn't supposed to say this now, but the further he moved from the center of the bell curve, the more he gave me the creeps. But he also taught me an important lesson about androgyny.











In his twenties he was obviously masculine--nice looking but not particularly handsome. But somewhere in the middle there, before he pushed plastic surgery past its natural limits, he was quite, quite beautiful. This photo shows what I mean. If one didn't know who this is, at a glance would you think this was a very pretty man, or a pretty woman?







As a romance writer, I often think about what qualities I need to capture and emphasize about my characters to show their masculinity and femininity. In a romance, a large part of the interest comes from the contrasts between the sexes.





When the hero is drop dead gorgeous, the writer often points out the scar, the broken nose, the crooked eyebrow that "saves" him from being "pretty."








Something I try to do in creating characters is to find one distinguishing physical characteristic. Caleb in SEALed With a Promise has mobile "Brad Pitt" lips.

In my work in progress, SEALed With a Ring, my hero, though he isn't vain, has been defined by a face so extraordinarily perfect that it couldn't be ignored or overlooked by either men or women. But after he is injured, although he feels the same, his identity in other people's eyes is changed. All his life, in a lineup, he was "the gorgeous one." The scar isn't horribly disfiguring, but now, forever, he's the "one with the scar."





So I'm thinking a lot about what makes a man handsome, but not pretty. Suppose a man is pretty? Could he be a romantic hero?

How about ugliness? How homely could a man be and still be a romantic hero?

Love at First Flight Launch Party!

By: Marie Force
Welcome to the party! Come on in, have a drink, hit the buffet table, and settle in for a good time! That's what I'll be saying tomorrow night at my book signing party at which I expect about 90 people. I've been very blessed to have a huge circle of supporters cheering me on from the sidelines. Love at First Flight is dedicated to them because they kept me going long enough to write and sell Line of Scrimmage, which in turn led to this one—a ten-year labor of love from idea to publication.

The book is set in Baltimore, one of my favorite cities. I lived just south of B'more, as the locals call it, for three years in the 1990s. I have vivid memories of pushing my now 14-year-old daughter around the Inner Harbor and Fells Point in a stroller. When the Southwest planes used to go over our house on their way to the BWI Airport, she'd say, "Welcome to Baltimore. Enjoy your stay." My son, who is almost 11, was born in Bethesda, MD, right before we moved to Jacksonville, FL, which also features prominently in L@FF. The third location you'll visit in the book is my hometown of Newport, RI. So in many ways, L@FF is a sentimental journey. Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, I still work for the company that hired me when I lived in B'more so I get down there from my current home in RI quite often.

My friend and coworker, April Force Pardoe (no relation, if you can believe that) and her husband Rich, lived for years in a fabulous rowhouse in the city that I "borrowed" to use as Michael's house in the book. Michael tells Juliana that he lived across the street in an apartment and became friends with the guy who owned the place as he was renovating it. When the owner had to move suddenly for his job, he offered it to Michael "for a song" because he knew Michael would take good care of the place. That's exactly how April and her husband Rich came to own 8 South Chester Street in Baltimore. So I thought it would be fun to give you an inside look at the place where Michael and Juliana fall in love:

Here's the view of the living room from the front door. See that first wood door on the right side? That's the teeny tiny bathroom that Juliana marvels over when she first sees it. She mentions that she can't believe there's a phone in there, and Michael tells her the former owner put them in every bathroom. "You'll never miss a call in this house," he says. Picture Michael and Juliana sitting on that sofa, folding clothes and drinking wine the night he tells her about the brother he lost. Picture Juliana coming down those stairs (far left) to offer comfort after Michael's ugly confrontation with Paige.



Rowhouses are tall and deep. So the living room feeds into the dining room...



...which feeds into the kitchen. Note that the cabinets are suspended from the ceiling. Very cool!



Here's another view of the kitchen. I love those slate countertops. Can't you picture Juliana rocking out at the stove, stirring the sauce as Michael watches her from the doorway? Or when he brings her roses and champagne to celebrate after the trial finally goes to the jury?



Going upstairs from the living room, here is April and Rich's bedroom. This is on the second level and was Juliana's room in the book:



Also on the second floor was another bathroom and a second bedroom that Michael uses as an office and a home for his Bowflex machine.

Up one more flight of stairs to the room April and Rich used as a TV room, but this was Michael's room in the book. So picture his bed against the brick wall. The curtains cover the sliding door that leads to the lower deck and the roof deck.



Another view of Michael's room:



Michael's bathroom (more of that fabulous slate):



And finally, the view of the Inner Harbor from the roof deck where several important events occur in the book:



Thank you so much to Rich and April for "sharing" their former home with me, Michael, and Juliana. At one point, Michael talks about how proud he is of his home. After growing up in a three bedroom ranch house with three sisters, "I can breathe here," he says. Juliana, who has struggled for everything in her life, completely understands what he means. Because April and Rich moved into this house in the city after I left the area, I was only there a couple of times. But it made an impact on me. When I was thinking about what Michael's home might be like, I kept seeing April's place. It was too good to pass up!

For the writers out there, have you ever been somewhere, even briefly, that stays with you long after? Have you used any of those places in your books?

For the readers, how important is setting to your enjoyment of a story? Do you think it will help you to better picture Michael's house to have seen these photos?

Now, down to launch day business! I'll give away a copy of Love at First Flight and one of Line of Scrimmage to those who leave comments here and on my blog. The comment period will close on July 4 on both blogs so check back to see if you won. If you've already read Line of Scrimmage, just let me know. Have you heard about my Book Club Meeting on July 20 at 7 p.m. EDT on my blog? I will post some questions on the main page, and then we'll air it out in the comments. There'll be prizes, hot dancing boys, and lots of fun! WARNING: there will be spoilers so make sure you read the book before the meeting. Also, make sure to check the listing on the sidebar of my blog for other opportunities to win copies of my books.

Finally, I'll be running a contest on my website beginning today and going through July 7. Check in every day for a question from Love at First Flight. The questions will be posted at random times each day, so you'll have to check in often. Email the answers to me to be entered into the drawing for the Love at First Flight Grand Prize Gift Basket. You must answer all seven questions correctly to be included in the drawing.

Everyone set to party? Ready? Set? LAUNCH THAT BOOK!!! Go forth and READ!

Love at First Flight Launch Week!

By: Marie Force

It always seems so far off in the future, and then suddenly it's HERE! Tomorrow is the official launch date for Love at First Flight, even though it's been in stores for a week or so already. I'm already hearing from readers, who are enjoying Michael and Juliana's story! One of them wrote to me over the weekend: "I started reading it at the book store for over 2 hours and finally decided to buy your book. I loved the story you created between Michael and Juliana. I couldn't stop reading because I wanted to know what happened. I loved how you wrote the character of Michael ... I've been looking for another new author to read and I'm happy I found you. I'm glad I went home when I did because you wrote all the emotional parts so beautifully that I couldn't help crying."

There'll be lots of opportunities to win copies of Love at First Flight and Line of Scrimmage this week! Come by the launch party tomorrow here on the Casa Blog as well as on my blog. I'll be announcing a Launch Week Contest tomorrow, so be sure to come by to get the details!

And don't forget to come to my Love at First Flight Book Club meeting on July 20 at 7 p.m. EDT. Warning, there will be spoilers, so make sure you read the book before the party! I’ll be giving away some great prizes to participants.

This book has been 10 years in the making—from idea to publication. I look forward to celebrating tomorrow with my Casa sisters and all our friends!

L@FF Blog Tour: Come By, Comment, and Win!

Happily Ever After

I was all set to write up today’s blog on the Lathan summer vacation plans. I had the first paragraph written in my head and was going to open it up for folks to talk about their favorite holiday spots. But then I came home from teaching the preschoolers at church, a typical Sunday morning of no special significance, and discovered sitting on my desk the carnations you see in this photo with a card that says: “Just thinking about you and how much I love us.”

Inside my husband wrote: “I could say these flowers and this card are for no special occasion, but that would be a lie. You’re my heart’s constant thought. XXOO, Steve”

OK, say aah! Yes, he is a really wonderful guy and I know I am incredibly blessed. And yes I could brag on and on about how often he expresses his love with similar gestures. He would LOVE to hear you all praise his thoughtfulness! LOL! It is entirely true and I do not have to exaggerate in how marvelously romantic my own Mr. Darcy is. But I am not writing this to boast my good fortune or exalt my hubby or to make anyone feel sad if they haven’t found their Prince Charming. It is just that his words and these simple flowers struck me forcibly.

We writers of romance are inspired for different reasons, I am sure. We come from varied romantic backgrounds and have widely diverse beliefs in what a male/female relationship entails. And most likely we are not all married happily and have suffered serious emotional hardships along the way. But we must have one thing in common, I think, and that is the hope that “happily-ever-after” – however we may define it – does exist. Can there be a romance writer who envisions their hero and heroine NOT living together forever? Can a reader of romance be a true fan of the genre if she expects the relationship to whither and die soon after the book ends? Correct me if I am wrong, but the answer to the first question has to be NO. If asked the second question a few years ago, before I began writing, I would have shaken my head in bafflement, certain that the answer was an unequivocal NO. What would be the point in reading a romance novel if one did not desire the couple to be happy and beat the odds?

The reason these flowers and my husband’s poetic words seared my heart and compelled me to write this essay is because I know too well that the answer to the latter question isn’t a clear NO. I know full well that the real world of marriage and love isn’t always what we write or read in a novel. There are a huge number of frogs mixed in with the princes! Not everyone is so lucky in love. However, my marriage, and many many others that I know personally, proves that romance is alive and well on planet earth. But we aren’t necessarily talking about the real world here.

I am talking about ladies who pick up a romance novel.

I wrote my sequel to Pride and Prejudice because I believed with all my heart that Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Darcy would have a good life together. That they powerfully loved each other. That Jane Austen was strongly conveying that message. That they would live happily-ever-after. How I have chosen to weave that future may not be everyone’s ideal, but why would anyone wish grief upon this literary couple? Why would a reader wish misery, tragedy, and a swift dissolution of the romance to ANY literary couple? Yet time and time again I receive comments from disgruntled readers who clearly anticipated and desired unhappiness for the Darcys and are downright angry that I gave them a content, sexually fulfilling, bonded relationship. Yep, I am still shaking my head in bafflement and am sure I will never understand the attitude. Thankfully I receive FAR more comments from satisfied readers! This gives me hope that not everyone is jaded into believing true love is impossible. Or at least that they have the outlook one would expect from a romance reader.

Then I come home on an average Sunday to discover a sweet gift from my soul mate, who is as I write this expressing his devotion by preparing a delicious dinner for his family to enjoy. And of course I love the flowers and will treasure the card and thanked him profusely - sigh After a reverent period on display, it will be added to the enormous box containing all his cards and poems written for me. I will rifle through some of them as I always do when storing away the latest, reading the sentiments spanning the 24 years we have been together, and it will rejuvenate my heart, bolster my spirit, and sustain my inspiration in writing Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth as I do. Thank you, Steve, for daily showing me what love is far better than any romance novelist, even me, can write it.

Free Reads, Anyone???

Everybody loves free stuff, right? So what’s better than reading your favorite authors’ works for free? In the past, Casa Babes have woven a fun tale out of a whacky cast of characters, the tale growing wilder and wilder until the end. They’re lots of fun, and one of these days when we’re not so inundated with deadlines, we’ll weave another fun tale for our readers!

In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to share some of my before published shorts in a free read, serialized version in a newsletter. So if anyone is interested in signing up, I’ve already sent off the first two scenes from Goddess in Training for newsletter members but can forward these to you if you want to sign up.

http://www.terryspear.com/

Why are free reads great ideas? It shows diversity. Some of our Casa Babes had never written in 1st person, so it was a fun challenge for them. Some only write historical so adding a historical touch to the contemporary story line made it fun for readers and the authors alike.

If you had a chance to read some more of our tales in progress in between releases, for free, wouldn’t you like to check it out? And what do you say, Casa Babes? Want to do another story in the fall?

Just let us know, and we’ll get started for another free Casablanca story in the future!

Terry Spear

Characters Who Take Root

By Terry Spear
http://www.terryspear.com/

Just like a seed buried in the soil for any kind of plant~ ground cover, tree, flower, blade of grass, our characters start out as kernels of possibilities. The environment the plant grows in shapes the plant. Too dry, the plant has to adapt or die. Too windy and the tree must bend or break. Just like our characters, they often don’t choose what life throws in their path. But with our characters, they have to make choices that often puts them at more risk.

Some authors make detailed sketches of their characters before they launch them into their books. They have a neat concept of what their characters are all about before they write the opening scene.

But for me, being a pantser who writes as the scenes come to me, I could no more do that, than I can plot out a book. What I envision is a character with a mission, with some big motivation as to why it is imperative that they must accomplish this task, and it has to have some time limit, or there’s no urgency. They have an occupation that further defines them. And they must have a fun way to meet the hero early on. That’s it! Then the trouble begins. And how they deal with it reveals their character. We then go from a named character who the reader knows nothing about to a real person who they can fall in love with or hate to their heart’s content. Hopefully, it’s the villain they hate and the hero and heroine they fall in love with!

I just finished teaching an online writing workshop and one of my students mentioned that in her last several books, all her heroines sounded the same. So here’s the dilemma. We want to have unique characters in all our books. If some are in more than one of our books, we want to show the same characterization from book to book so that it doesn’t seem they have multiple personality disorder, although with a caveat. People act differently in different situations around different people. So we can have a cool dude who is rough and tough around the guys, but when it comes to the girls, he’s a marshmallow. Or maybe he’s at home on the range, but put him in a ship and it’s another story. Or maybe he’s a real daytime character, but make him work the nightshift and we see another side of him entirely. Or better yet, maybe he’s playing second fiddle to the main character, and this time…he’s got a chance to get the girl.

But what about having characters that are similar from story to story? Let’s say I write spunky heroines, which I do. That’s what my readers expect from me. If I had a moody, laid back chick who waited for others to do her bidding, would readers be disappointed? Probably. Still, I can write lots of spunky heroines and make them completely different from one another. How? Their life experiences, their motivations, their goals define them. And how they deal with conflict further illustrates what kind of character they are.

When I begin the story, I don’t know all the trouble my characters are going to get into, only that they will. I don’t know how they’ll react, but I consider lots of different avenues they can take. Often I don’t even know what troubles they’ve had in the past, but as I write, it comes to me. And as they venture into the unknown, they become real people…or wolves, as the case may be.

So what do you think is the best way to go? Character sheets, or wing it???

Puppy Dogs!

I’ve got to say I love the picture and the caption even if it’s nothing to do with my post.

I’m dug under with a book and a final read for my October book, Hex in High Heels.

And as always real life surprises me.

Yesterday afternoon I went out front and next thing I knew a cute little Westie was there with “hi!” and demanding attention. No way to identify him, although I’ll take him to my vet to see if there’s a chip, and I couldn’t leave him outside. Natch. He went into the back yard with no problem, loved water and kibble and while Bogie isn’t happy, new doggie seems content. I haven’t seen any Westies in the neighborhood, but I’ll do what I can while my dh is saying “I think we have a new dog”

My family knows me too well. I love all animals and I’m vain enough to say they love me.

Good thing I don’t intend to be one of those little old ladies that collect critters, but still, would you turn away a cute little dog who has all this love to give? And he could end up in a book too!

Linda

What a Character

Years ago, I was a soap opera addict.

Well, let's make that... today I'm addicted to one soap opera. And maybe not really addicted. I mean, I don't tape it or Tivo it or anything. I just watch if I happen to be home at that time.

This particular soap has had some fantastic plots over the years along with the usual fare for daytime serials. In addition to the switched-at-birth, kidnappings, amnesia, coma, now-he's-dead-now-he's not stories, this show has also featured possession by the devil and visions and other crazy things beyond the usual crazy things.

How can these unbelievable stories keep viewers? Daytime television, after all, is not jam-packed with special effects that can transport the viewer into a new world. To bring viewers into these wild plots, the acting has to be serviceable, but the characterizations have to be spot on.

The characterizations--the building of characters--is the work of the writer.

Yesterday, Beth talked about writing great secondary characters. I couldn't agree more with her viewpoint about these important supporting roles. They do need to have "depth, interest, and unique traits," as she put it. And they have to perform a function in the plot or they just become tiresome distractions.

When an author draws characters, secondary or otherwise, who come alive, the writer can do almost anything with them as long as she stays true to the portrait she's put together. So if she's constructed a hero who is cautious and intellectual, having him suddenly drop his career as a renowned physicist to become a sky-diving instructor (because she needs a sky-diving instructor to advance the plot) will lose readers fast--unless the author has set up the shift appropriately.

The author could have that meditative hero join a group of sky-diving risk-takers, for example, if they also happen to be rocket scientists who hold the key to an equation he's struggled with all his life. The author could do all sorts of wild things with that risk-averse character, as long as his actions grew organically from how he views the world. And that point of view is set up by....the author.

I have great admiration for writers who take readers on a fantastic journey, so that by the end of the book or show you're thinking: "that's completely unrealistic....but I believed every moment of it!"

In a recent blog interview, I was asked how I come up with book ideas. I said I usually start with a "what if" premise -- what if someone tries to get fired (as in Fire Me)? What sorts of things would this person do? What would that day be like?

But once I have a premise rolling around in my head, it's the characters who ultimately drive the plot. When I don't listen to the characters, and I try to make them do things they wouldn't really do, I stall as a writer. Only when I listen to what they want to say or do is creativity unleashed again.

When I was watching the soap I mentioned earlier as it featured a tale of exorcism, my kids, off during the summer, howled at the shenanigans on the screen. But I was rapt--not just because I wanted to know what would happen next, but because I was in awe of the writer for taking me to this completely unrealistic place...and yet I believed.

Memorable characters, memorable soap operas....I'd love to hear your favorites.

I thought it might happen!

I thought it might happen. Even planned it, really. And earlier this week, it happened!
What happened, you ask? I had a reader/reviewer, who got an advance copy of HEALING LUKE, email me to ask if Luke's brother, Aaron, and their father, Bart, would get stories of their own. As an author, there's not a better compliment than to have a reader ask to see more from your secondary characters. (Well, there is "I stayed up all night to finish the book!" and "I'm going to the store now to buy your whole backlist!" ...but wanting stories for the secondary characters is right up there!)
Knowing that a reader not only fell in love with your characters in THIS book, but that they enjoyed your writing enough to want more is heady stuff. I'm flattered beyond belief.
It also reinforces my belief that memorable secondary characters are almost as important to a story as having a hero and heroine the reader can love. In fact, I have a workshop that I give to writers' groups called "Secondary Characters: The Good, The Bad and The Quirky."
Good secondary characters have depth, interest, unique traits and–perhaps most important– they have a function in the story and add something to the book. For example, in the opening chapters of HEALING LUKE, Luke's father is his adversary in terms of Luke's initial goal, remaining a recluse and avoiding failure. Bart helps get the plot rolling by hiring Abby to help with Luke's physical therapy. Throughout the course of the book, as Luke's relationship with Abby grows, we also see his relationship with his father evolve. By the end of the book, Luke is looking to Bart for advice in the role of a mentor. Bart's character never changes. He's essentially the same concerned and loving- if a bit out of touch- father he was at the opening of the book, but he plays an important role in the advancement of the plot and highlighting aspects of the conflict that Luke must face. Bart is not just window dressing. He has his own flaws, backstory and ways of dealing with issues that are uniquely his. The same can be said for Luke's brother, Aaron, who plays an even bigger role in the book than Bart.
And the answer to that question the reader asked? Will Bart and Aaron get their own books? I certainly hope so. I have ideas for Aaron's book, even had most of it written a couple computers ago. (I'm afraid that file may be lost in the great beyond now...) But some day, with luck, two more awesome Morgan men will have a chance to have their story told!
What secondary characters have you always wanted to see stories written for but so far haven't?
Happy Wednesday and happy birthday to my very own hero...my hubby Paul!!