Characters We Create or Steal and Can They Teach Us Something?

Many thanks to Rhobin  for another probing topic. 

The Meth House by Judith Copek

 The Meth House: $1..99 for your Kindle and other devices

This week I published the novelette, (shorter than a novella, longer than a long short story) The Meth House for  Amazon's Kindle.  By the way, are you aware that you do not actually need a Kindle to read Kindle publications?  On the  page where the book is sold, there is a link to get the FREE app for reading on other devices.  Once you. have the app, you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. This has been a free public service  announcement.

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This month our blog roll has returned to the ever-fruitful topic of characters. Do they come from our minds? Have we perhaps met them before? And what do our characters reveal (if anything) about ourselves.  Can they teach us something?

I will use examples from The Meth House. I lived in Colorado from first grade through high school and in the summers while at college.  This story was inspired by a newspaper article about homeless living in the state forests, and how one of then had set the forest on fire (accidentally).  I don't have a fire in my novelette, but but I have an old, abandoned cabin (maybe once a meth house), where my protagonist comes upon a little girl, dirty, scared and abandoned.  My main character is a reformed alcoholic who lived on the street for many years, sobered up with the help of AA, and became a social worker.  She has seen a lot, and experienced a lot.  Bad stuff happens at the cabin and then the locale moves to Boulder,  Estes Park, and finally out to the plains and beet fields of Northeastern Colorado where more bad stuff happens. You read the newspaper, you get ideas, you write the story.

The only characters I "stole" were the Moos brothers, the baddest of the bad.  I knew of these twins (always innately bad) from my days in grade school.  They must have been born with evil genes.  The little girl, Lina, came out of my head, as did Hattie Pullen,  her lawyer friend and Mr. Ed.  The deceitful uncle, Ferguson, the child predator: anyone's guess where he came from. But these people were all somehow inspired by the settings in Colorado,  the state forests, Boulder, Estes Park and the sugar beet growing towns of Northeastern Colorado. My husband and I once drove through the town I named "Beetville." There were places almost as decrepit as the meth house.  As a teenager, my pals and I used to drink at the  unnamed bar.

Meth has been a problem in rural areas for a long time.  Little towns lose population and jobs and  the young people feel trapped.  Drugs are a tempting outlet for despair and even boredom. For years, I collected newspaper clipping about meth, thinking I would write a novel sometime.  But The Meth House is not really about meth.
Unlike me, Hattie has seen a lot of life, as an alcoholic living on the street for years.  She got sober and become a social worker.  Lina?  Lina is every  frightened child who has ever been abandoned in a scary place.  If you were ever scared witless as a kid, you can understand Lina.  If you've eve been down on your luck and come out of your tailspin, you can identify with Hattie.  If you've ever known a starchy upright man who can entertain little kids with his antics, you've met Archer.

So the answer is yes, we have met all these characters in various guises before.   We know them.  Maybe they are even archetypes.  But what do they reveal about us?  Our fears, our worries, our knowledge, our hopes.  And who wouldn't want to grab a handful of cash out of an abandoned suitcase stuffed with money?  Hey, I wouldn't mind.  Hattie didn't either, but she used it for good.

Can our characters teach us something?  Yes, they can teach us bravery, compassion, a longing for justice.  They can teach us empathy for others. They can teach us love.  But the purpose of writing is to entertain, and characters who are ordinary, but courageous and stubborn, like Hattie, can  both teach and entertain.

Check out what other writers have to say about this fascinating topic.   


Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Marie Laval http://marielaval.blogspot.co.uk/
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1c1
Rachael Kosinski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com
Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
Connie Vines https://mizging.blogspot.com/

The Best Homemade Tabouleh by Pat Deuson

Today's post is by guest blogger and fellow writer Pat Deuson!  Pat has a new novel, Superior Longing,  coming out today.  What could be more exciting than that?  Well, maybe food.  Food is endlessly varied, tasty and it gives us writers the energy to keep going.   

Pat Deuson, Novelist and Cook

Tabouleh is a tasty, nutritious  Middle Eastern dish that Pat has recently discovered.  Here's what she has to say about it. 

Tabouleh, so colorful and fresh. . . tasty, too

Food is a big part of the lives of Neva, Linnea and all those who live and work at Cooks Inn. It's a big part of my life too. I'm an avid cook and spend as much time cooking [sometimes more] than I do writing. This week-end I rediscovered tabouleh.
Like all folk recipes there are as many as there are cooks. It's got a flexibility that allows creativity as much as use it up, don't throw it out thrift. So when people were unexpectedly coming for lunch on a beautiful California afternoon, sandwiches, veg beans from the freezer, tabouleh with garden tomatoes and fresh peach and raspberry compote came to mind. So how do you make tabouleh ?
You start with kasha. What is kasha? Cracked grain. There are a lot of grains that can be cracked and I've tried several. The one I prefer is wheat. I think it takes a special kind of person to eat buckwheat groat kasha, but it's often the one find you find mentioned.
Raw grain is tough to chew and needs to be softened, which will take a fairly long time. You can do this yourself or buy kasha in a processed form so it's as easy to cook as processed couscous. I've seen couscous made by hand in Morocco many times. It is a lengthy and involved process, the cooking even more so. Processed couscous and kasha are much much easier and faster. But even processed kasha needs to be softened and hydrated. The easiest way I've found is to bring 1 3/4 cup of water to a boil, add 1 cup of kasha, a pinch of salt, reduce heat and cook for 5 minutes, remove from heat and let stand for about 10 more minutes. Fluff lightly with a fork.
After that the fun begins. Do you have some grilled or poached chicken to dice,  a little roasted corn, or some diced tomatoes just dripping with summer time goodness? Or some arugula and toasted pecans with cukes and sweet balsamic vinegar mellowed by some savory olive oil? Season with salt/pepper and serve it warm or room temperature. Or do you want a summer salad - tabouleh - for those impromptu guests who you know will set the table while you chop garden tomatoes, cukes. a bit of fresh mint, some green or red onion all sauced with some good olive oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper? They will love it.

For more of Neva Moore and the doings in and about Cooks Inn, the first book in the series, Superior Longing, published by Echelon press, is out today!  The first ebook of this series is available on Kindle, Nook, Omnilit and Smashwords. Pat is currently writing the next book, Collective Instinct.

Neva blogs and post around the net at these sites:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Superior-Longing/130098057083303?sk=wall
http://cooksinn.blogspot.com/
http://superiorlonging.blogspot.com/
Pat is also found blogging or posting:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1229310389
http://twitter.com/#!/pdeuson


Try the recipe and pick up a copy of Superior Longing from Echelon Press.  

Seven Suspenseful Sentence Sunday - Week Two!

             I don't remember the explosion, only impressions.

            The air, a solid presence, a hot rushing wind, the odor of sulfur, like the doors to hell had been blown open.

            How did I come to be lying in the grass?  Sharp pain in my ears, as if they had been ravaged by a dentist's drill.

            Where was I?  Confused by my witlessness, I struggled to my knees. Pieces of leaf and grass stuck to my hands--and glass, bits of glass gleamed like raindrops, all over the lawn, everywhere.

           

These seven sentences  are from The Shadow Warriors.  Emma, the narrator has gone out late at night to investigate a break-in at a computer institute, only to have the building blow up.

Late in 2010, my novel of Information Warfare and software agents, The Shadow Warriors, was released to the Kindle.  Only $2.99 until end of February!

 Here is the blurb on the back cover of the trade paperback.

Emma Lee Davis must delve deep into the past to find a weapon to end the Infowar that threatens to de-stabilize a computer-dependent global economy.  Project manager of a  tiny firm of cyber-sleuths, Emma scrambles to make the connections between a body washing up on a beach in Singapore, and the technical derring-do at a German university.

She tracks a desperate hacker planning a unique software auction, a determined entrepreneur who will stop at nothing to acquire  ‘bleeding edge’ software and tumbles onto a new generation of terrorists with their own agenda. 

Emma and her colleagues are sucked into a vortex of lies, spies, and betrayals and ultimately into the sleaze and paranoia of Berlin in the months before the wall comes down. Not quite glamorous, sometimes nerdy, always nosy, irreverent and intuitive, Emma becomes the reluctant sleuth. She narrates the story as she scrambles to manage a software project and her complicated love life, while puzzling over the paradox, “if our mission is to stop computer crime, why are we abetting it?”

  The Shadow Warriors Kindle  

For more information about cyber-warfare see: Cyberwar

Don’t forget to read all the other excerpts of suspenseful sentences.  Hie your browser to:

Suspense Sunday Seven Sentence Authors

Suspenseful Seven Sentence Sunday

Maxine had told her to escape and that meant that Maxine must have some insight into the situation with the kids and El Tigre, but if Maxine was wrong . . . 

When the door opened, she almost knocked the woman down to get into the john where she locked the door and put her drink on the counter. She pulled the plastic bag with hand sanitizer, alcohol rubs, and mouthwash out of her handbag, along with matches from the bar. Oh God, she was dying of nerves, and her hands shook so badly she could barely strike the matches, but she doused the paper towels with the mouthwash and the sanitizer and lit the alcohol rub. Everything flamed up like the 4^th of July. Once she had the paper towels on fire, she lit the contents of her cocktail glass, and then the wastebasket.  She kept feeding and fanning the flames until the smoke alarm went off, emitting a shrill sound they must hear on Mars.

These seven sentences  are from my just completed (first draft) novel whose working title is In Flight.

Late in December, my novel of Information Warfare and software agents, The Shadow Warriors, was released to the Kindle.  Such a deal at $2.99.   Here is the blurb on the back cover of the trade paperback.

Emma Lee Davis must delve deep into the past to find a weapon to end the Infowar that threatens to de-stabilize a computer-dependent global economy.  Project manager of a  tiny firm of cyber-sleuths, Emma scrambles to make the connections between a body washing up on a beach in Singapore, and the technical derring-do at a German university.

She tracks a desperate hacker planning a unique software auction, a determined entrepreneur who will stop at nothing to acquire  ‘bleeding edge’ software and  tumbles onto a new generation of terrorists with their own agenda. 

Emma and her colleagues are sucked into a vortex of lies, spies, and betrayals and ultimately into the sleaze and paranoia of Berlin in the months before the wall comes down. Not quite glamorous, sometimes nerdy, always nosy, irreverent and intuitive, Emma becomes the reluctant sleuth. She narrates the story as she scrambles to manage a software project and her complicated love life, while puzzling over the paradox, “if our mission is to stop computer crime, why are we abetting it?”

  The Shadow Warriors Kindle  

Don't forget to read the reviews which are incorporated into the Trade Paperback version.  I love my Kindle.  Right now I'm reading Joseph Finder's Paranoia on it.

A recent photo of the author at the Pompidou Centre in Paris