I AM A THIEF!

- How do your family experiences translate into writing scenes?

 I could write a book about this topic. My current WIP is set in a Mennonite Community  in South Central Kansas.  Where my grandparents and mother and many relatives all came from.  I didn't use family characters (well, one), but the culture and ethos of the town that I was familiar with as a child. 

 I took one of my mother's adventures in the 1920's and wrote a book (not yet published) about it.  Just loosely based on her.  But it was such fun and my husband and I made a trip to California and saw the house where she lived and some of the scenes where the book took place.

 I wrote a novel (Festival Madness) about the Burning Man experience. My oldest son lives nearby and I've visited him and the festival three times.  Even got a poem out of it.  

My latest book was partly inspired by #2 son who went to scout camp and worked there for years in Northern Wisconsin.  We visited our kids at camp and it always seemed like a special place.  So I wrote Murder In the North Woods. No family in this book, but again, we spent a week doing research and I found a wealth of places to set scenes from a garage apartment to a huge modern house on a lake to a cottage and even a shoe company (I worked in the shoe industry for many years). 

They say "write what you know," advice I've followed for all my books.  I set my first novel, The Shadow Warriors in my husband's home town in Germany.  Second novel, World of Mirrors came about after a  vacation on a Baltic Island. Everything I write is somehow related  to places or  landscapes that speak to me.  Short stories are also fair game.  My husband's life as a young man and my life as a young girl have all gone into my short stories.  I even dragged bmy father into one, but no one will ever know. 

Here are some  accomplished writers who  will have their own interesting take on family and writing. 

 Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com

  Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com

 Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea 

Marci Baun http://www.marcibaun.com/blog

 Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/

Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com 

 Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobincourtright.com

Choosing Character Names Can be Fun or Frustrating.

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 What's in a name?  Sometimes Character names are easy: sometimes not. Since I've had books set in Germany, South Florida, Burning Man Festival, and my current WIP is set in 1953 Kansas, I feel like an expert on names.

 What I do when I began a novel is create a Word table name chart.  First name, Last name, page  first mentioned, who this character is.  I can sort the table by first name or last name.  The trick is not to have character names that look or sound alike.  You don't want Wayne, Warren, and Warner. Or Mary, Maria and Marilyn.  Nope. Don't do it. If you have ethnic characters they should have appropriate names.  Rich people often have different kind of names than poor ones. Bob Jones vs. Robert Richmond Jones, III.  

 

 In Festival Madness, I had lots of fun making up Burning Man names (everyone needs one) and hacker names  One. of my main male characters was Wayne. His hacker name is the Locksmith.  He can break into any computer. Makes sense. My female POV character is Emma, who calls herself Dust Bunny at Burning Man.Indian characters are Reena and Raj.  I worked with a very techie guy named Wayne, and Reena and Raj's true story got into the book, too. But these people are all long ago and far away.  Must confess I stole of lot of people and places for that book.

 

In my German romantic suspense novel, World of Mirrors, I had Americans (good and bad) Germans, naturally, Russians, and even a Vietnamese man.  I called a glamorous woman Romy, after the actress Romy Schneider.  The name must fit the character.  I used the physical attributes of a couple of men where I worked. Name, description, character:  everything should fit together. 

 My recent challenge is my latest book, a mystery although it seems to be turning into a romance but that is a different story. In the novel, tentative title Lizzie Bender Ledoux, I had to find typical Mennonite names, French names, "regular" names, and even names for the pets.

When I begin to write, I start a Word Table to use as a character chart with a column for each topic below.

Since  it's a word table, it can be sorted by first name or last name.

   First Name  Last Name  Who  Page Introduced  Incidentals    

Research may be necessary.  For instance, to Google Mennonite last names. 

                  <Mennonite Names in Pennsylvania>. 

 Right away I hit pay dirt. 

 Something else you need to do is take a look at the most popular names from the period in which you are writing.  Pick a few way down the list, too.  Even animal names can be trendy.  I called the three pointer dogs in my book, "Spot," "Mike", and "Freckles."  The cat is "Callie."  

 These are things that work for me.  Check out the other writers on this blog roll to see what creative ideas they have. 

 

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea

Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/

Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com

Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com

Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/

Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog

Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-2i7

Marci Baun http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/

Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/

Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/

 

My Oddest Character

Does A Tran Character Fit It at Burning Man?

What is the oddest character you have ever dreamed up, and how did they fit into a story?
I didn't dream "her" up, but she became a great character with bravery and wit.  

I belong to two professional organizations for mystery writers:  Sisters In Crime and Mystery Writers of America.  We are always education ourselves about topics of interest to crimewriters, and several yeas ago, this involved visits to the Norfolk County Jail by both groups in separate visits.

Needless to say,  this was an intriguing experience which I don't have space to describe but we were taken all over the jail, including the section where prisoners were in protective custody, and throughout the prison, the color of the inmates uniforms identified their status.  It was hard to ignore that one of the inmates who appeared to be a female. "They" had long dark ringlets and swanned about with a seductive smile on their face working their shoulders for dramatic affect.  The other  inmates hooted and whistled which obviously pleased the ringleted one.

Our escorts said, "That's Angel. Protective custody."  A male identifying as a woman would have a rough and dangerous time in prison. This inmate belonged in protective custody.

I  remembered Angel,and sure enough, she was still around (or again around--who knew?) at my next jail visit.  Still running her  hand through dark ringlets and strutting around.
I had begun a new book with a whole section  devoted to the Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert of Northern Nevada.  Of course, I needed colorful characters.  I had an entire "camp" of computer types, but I needed someone else.  My main  character, Emma, was driving an old rented camper to the festival and she stopped at the overlook for Pyramid Lake. There was a person of uncertain sex, a woman she first thought, and then on second or third glance, a man.  With dark ringlets. This was Daze, soon. to be Daisy,  who was transitioning from male to female.  Emma liked Daze and they spent time together at Burning Man, where everything goes.  Everything. Daze convinced a reluctant Emma to participate in the women's topless bicycle ride, "The Critical Tits Parade."  I am not making this up. Well, the story but not the bike ride.  It's real.

After the festival, Daze got a job in a company Emma knew, and lived in the garage apartment at Emma's home outside Boston.  More adventures ensued.

I  studied the book,  She's Not There, about a person transitioning between sexes.  This was probably around 2007-08 when the topic was not so well known.  I really liked Daze, who became quite real to me. "She" was funny and I liked  getting to know "her." And she was my oddest character and I am so happy to have found her staring at  beautiful Pyramid Lake in Northern Nevada.  Where did you find your oddest character?
 These bloggers have their own stories. Take a look.


 Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1LT
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/

Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

Season of Our Discontent or Maybe our Content

Does the season ever play a part in your setting? How do you think seasons affect setting & plot either physically or metaphorically?

Ah, yes, seasons.  In my writing it is always summer, my favorite season.  Only my first book was set in the fall and it had many issues and is stuck forever in the hard drive of my computer.

I never meant to write The Shadow Warriors, World of Mirrors, Festival Madness, The Meth House, and (scheduled for publication) Chased by Death and Murder in the North Woods to be set in summer.  An as yet unpublished novel (not a mystery) is set in 1928 Southern California.  In summer, of course. My WIP (work in process) is set in two periods in South Central Kansas.  Both periods take place during the wheat harvest, which is __summer.

How did all these summer books transpire? I have loved summer since I was a little kid.  No walking to school during snowstorms in summer.  No snowstorms in summer!  This winter we were both snowed in and iced in.  New England winters are awful.  Did I ever like winter sports?  No.  Swimming and tennis are summer sports.  Kick the can on a hot summer evening.  Riding bikes to the Platte River.  Swimming in the sand pit (a no-no).  Always summertime activities.

So how does summer as a season function in my books?  Let's take World of Mirrors, set in East Germany the year after the wall came down.  In the Baltic, where the novel takes place, the sun doesn't set until late.  The sailboats ply the waters off the island.  Tourists and locals crowd the nude beaches.  The little train takes visitors around the island.  My characters are posing as tourists, so they do touristy things.  Summer helps create their disguise.

The isle of Ruegen is peaceful in any season.  But the bad guys are there in summer.

Festival Madness is set at Burning Man which takes place the week before Labor Day.  Summer!  That was a no brainer.  The hot desert functions as a backdrop for a bad guy intent on mayhem. Half-naked people.  People in costumes.  Craziness.  Who can you trust?  In winter the Black Rock Desert is deserted. That wouldn't be any fun. The festival is a phantasmogoric scene of heat, dust, techno, costumes, art, craziness.  A perfect place for a novel.  A summer novel.

When the man burns, the summer sky is lit with flames and fireworks.

 My most recent publication is a novelette, The Meth House. What inspired the story was a news item about homeless people living off the grid in a national forest in Colorado.  Someone accidentally set a fire that burned a forest.  I didn't write about the fire, rather I wrote about an older woman who delivered food to the homeless from her church.  Naturally nobody would be living in a forest in the mountains in the winter.  Well, maybe rangers.   She is delivering food and other items and runs across an old cabin that someone says used to be a meth house.  She finds a child in the cabin and then the fun begins.  Estes Park, a summer resort figures in the story as does a trip to the hot plains of Northeastern Colorado where a meth house blows up and many further adventures insue.  In the good old summertime.

We associate memories and activities with all four seasons.  Summer is warm (maybe hot) with beaches, swimming, cookouts, rafting, mountain cabins, harvests, travel, picnics, long days and fun. But it's not all fun.  Bad stuff happens in any season.  In my books, bad stuff happens in summer.

Here are some good writers who will have a different take on the seasons and their writing.

   Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
  Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
  Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
   Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
  Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
  Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog
  Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobincourtright.com

Don't Underestimate Importance of Setting in Your Stories

 Blog Post:  Setting a Novel at Burning Man Festival

Find it on Amazon: Kindle or Trade Paperback

My Burning Man boots after a dust storm

Check it out!

HOW I STARTED TO WRITE AND KEPT WRITING

Writer's Desk After BIg-time Cleanup

I have always been a writer, beginning in fifth grade with a western novel:  Sun Up At Sundown, or was it Sundown at Sun Up?  I can never remember.
In high school and college I wrote for the school newspapers.  In college I also wrote a lot of creative papers and took a writing course.  The professor had published a somewhat scandalous novel, The Blind Bull, which made the course even more interesting.  He used to say, "I can teach you to write not badly, but not well."  Think about that for a while.
I enjoyed the course, but never wrote much afterward. Marriage, children, and volunteer work pushed writing into the future.  The next writing I did, well, it was writing computer programs for big IBM mainframes.  Remember them?

Flash back to over twenty years ago. I became, from time to time, disillusioned with high tech.  Programming for business could be a real hassle.  One evening I came home and ranted  to myself, "Why am I writing computer programs?  I should be writing novels. I like to read mysteries.  Writing a mystery should be easy, that's what I'll do.

Dumb and dumber, but that's what I did.  On a kludgy word processor.  Predating Word Perfect. 

My novel's title was The Password Is Death. I was stumbling around like a blind dog in a meat house. No idea what I was doing.  Did not understand motivation to say nothing of plotting.  The weird thing was, this all happened so long ago that agents responded to queries in writing.  Sometimes with advice.  I realized that the book had major flaws.  In an attempt to learn what I should be doing, I enrolled in a Writing Your Novel course at Harvard Extension.  Some excellent writers were in that course. I was inspired. Right after the course was over my husband had a business meeting in Singapore, and I went along for the ride which was, by the way, 22 hours long.
 The Password was Death, had some characters I wanted to hang around with because I liked them. On the return flight from Singapore, I read a tiny blurb in the airline magazine.  "The Fifth Annual Computer Security Conference will be held in May at Raffles Center in Singapore." Lights flashed.  Bells rang. Ye Gods, my characters could go to that meeting in Singapore! In my new novel.

In Singapore where The Shadow Warriors begins

 Yes, I found the  germ of my plot in the Singapore Airlines magazine.  Not that I knew the ending or what would happen but I did have people and settings and some ideas of action.  I used Goettingen, Germany, my husband's former hometown for the scenes in the  rest of the book. But everything began in Singapore.  I returned to Goettingen for on-site research.  Pub crawls, restaurants, library research, walking around the town and then walking some more. Ideas came like kamikazes. I think that was when I became a real writer.  I had been to Goettingen many times, but not with a writer's gaze. Research was fun and did it ever bring forth ideas. And I found other parts of the plot at my workplace in some technical journals with far out technology.  Ideas are everywhere.

This book became The Shadow Warriors.  I had no idea that this was also a computer game, and it was really dumb not to Google it.  Well, this was before Google, but not before Amazon. Always Google your book title, and check for books with identical names on Amazon. 

The Shadow Warriors went through many iterations and I found a writing group that helped enormously.I discovered writer's. conventions, writer's camps, other writers.

Then came my publishing fisasco.  Remember, this was before technology as we know it existed.  I found an internet publisher who was creating e-books and planning on doing POD, in its infancy then.  Suddenly, the company announced they weren't doing POD.  There was a palace revolt and 80% of the writers bolted for a newly formed company.  I waited too long.  Publisher went belly up.  Out in the cold with my nose pressed against the window.  Traditional publishers wanted nothing to do with a book with my kind of high tech plot.  Plus, it was  long.  Not long-long, but long. 120,000 words.  Too long.

I found out which POD printing company would have been used to publish the books in the now belly-up company.  They published mine. They published anyone. Then Amazon bought the company and all it's books and enabled The Shadow Warriors to make a second debut as an e-book.

Of course I got NO RESPECT back in those days for self-publishing.  You could almost hear people whispering behind your back.  Nonetheless, I made a little money and did some speaking gigs and began a second novel with the same characters.  Again too, long. I rewrote it with different characters, got rid of the backstory and went from 120,000 words for 86,000. A small e-book publisher picked it up and they also did POD and published it in all formats. World of Mirrors, suspense, not mystery, made  a little money. More speaking gigs. Now retired, I assumed I could write faster.  Did not happen. Still bumbling along.

I wrote another book I had to rewrite  and shorten. Is this sounding familiar? I'm trying to find a publisher for it now. I wrote my Burning Man book, Festival Madness, which  had to be approved by Burning Man organization. That's another story. After trying for twenty years, I got an agent, but she did not sell my next two books. We parted company amicably.  I'm in the middle of another novel with three unsold books, but I am working on this. In the meantime, I sold several short stories, some poems, and a memoir piece.

A novel of high tech and Burning Man

I hate doing PR. Remember, I was a dweeb.  But I like to write, to talk about writing, and, like most writers,  I love to read. Writing is a great occupation, but you will not likely support yourself as a writer. That's okay.  I love my friends in the writing community.  Looking around my ungodly messy office with piles of books and papers everywhere, and the cat asleep in the rocking chair, I know that I am happy.  And that counts for a lot. I started writing and never stopped. 

The writers below will tell you their own stories.  Everyone has a story.  Read on. 
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1ke
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
Margaret Fieland http://margaretfieland.wordpress.com
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

Sink into the Past, Prefer the Present, or Fancy the Future?

Our topic for this blog is to discuss what time period we prefer to set our stories – past, present, or future?

Okay, I have never really set a story in the future, but I have used bleeding edge software in my stories that will only. exist in the future: software agents, info war and facial recognition software.  Of course we are now in a period of Information Warfare, and "agents" are used all the time.  Facial recognition software is becoming more and more sophisticated.  Speculating about technology can be tricky, and so far I have been lucky to stay ahead of the curve, but I've actually stopped writing about technology, because it changes so fast that by the time the novel is written, edited and published, well, you could be talking about yesterday's latest and greatest.  That is a problem with the PRESENT.
My last published novel dealt with facial recognition technology, but this software identified whole groups of people. Not sure if this is available yet, but you can bet that it will be.

Festival Madness, A Burning Man Novel 

And the past?  Ah yes, the past.  I wrote a historical women's fiction novel, as yet unpublished, set in 1928 Southern California.  Prohibition, graft, corruption, get-rich-quick schemes.  Everybody on the make. Well, almost, everyone.  This was such fun to write about because there was such a wealth of material with built in conflicts and characters, both good and bad with their own conflicts.  The research?  I had a whole bookshelf and letters and photographs, even scrapbooks.  By the time the novel was finished, I felt like an expert on the 1920's.  It was fun. But the past always presents some challenges.  For example, I knew there was a hospital in Mexicali in 1928. But try to find a photo of it, or even a drawing.  Googled until my fingers were stubs.  I did find the nurses uniforms, a boon and made the hospital look kind of like the Mexicali schools.   So I like the past.  Just so long as it's not too distant.

Proposed cover of my California book

Currently, I trying something tricky, as least tricky for me.  I've started a novel set in 1953 Kansas, and also set in 2017 Kansas.  The main characters are grandmother and granddaughter who never knew each other.   I'm writing the past and present in alternate chapters.  This is going to be a real challenge,  and I hope I'm up to it.  It's fun, and 1953 is not that long ago, is it?  Maybe it is.    The novel is set north of Wichita in a Mennonite community, and I drawing on some family stuff as I did in the California book.  

So, I like to construct stories set in the  past and the present.  The future? Not so much.

Here are some bloggers who will give. you other perspectives on stories set in the past, present and future.  


Marie Laval http://marielaval.blogspot.co.uk/
Anne de Gruchy https://annedegruchy.co.uk/category/blog/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Dr. Bob Rich http://wp.me/p3Xihq-14G
Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Heidi M. Thomas http://heidiwriter.wordpress.com/
Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog
Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

The Title Can Help Sell the Book

Topic: How important is a title? What attracts you to a certain title, and how do you determine what to title your book?

 

Ah, titles! What a problem they can be.  For a writer, there’s always a “working title,” something to file the document under.  It may be the final title or not.  My three WIP titles, two short stories and one novel are:“The Powwow,”   “The Meth House,”  and Lizzie Bender Ledoux.  I’ll definitely keep the short story titles. I only began “Lizzie” a few weeks ago, so all bets are off as to whether that title will have staying power.

I am a firm believer that short titles are best, easier to remember and with a dramatic punch:  The Great Gatsby, War and Peace, Jane Eyre, 1984, On the Road ,Atonement, Mrs. Dalloway.  Well, you get the idea. My three published books all have short titles, and oddly enough, the working title became the published title: 

The Shadow Warriors, World of Mirrors and Festival Madness.  The title should describe the book, and maybe be mentioned in an important passage of the book.  

Festival Madness

 Then there are wonderful titles of medium length, such as To Kill a Mockingbird, The Sun Also Rises, Catcher In the Rye, Gone with the Wind, and A Confederacy of Dunces.  All suggest a mood and even a mystery. Wonderful titles! 

What about longish titles? I am thinking of A Visit From The Goon Squad, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Longer yes, but compelling. Long, long titles are obviously verboten. 

How would the publisher put them on the book cover? 

Short stories can get by with longer titles, but I still like to keep mine short, like “Bad Trip,” and “The Insurrection.”  “The Rich Are Different” is my longest short story title.  

A great title like Gone Girl can help sell a book. By the way, titles cannot be copyrighted. When The Shadow Warriors was already published, and I’d done a lot of PR, I discovered that the name was a popular computer game. I never checked Amazon or Googled it. Maybe Google wasn’t even around then, but I made a serious mistake.

Here are some great writers who have interesting and varied opinions on the topic of titles.  Give them a read.

Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Victoria Chatham http://victoriachatham.blogspot.ca
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com
Heather Haven http://heatherhavenstories.com/blog/
Dr. Bob Rich  http://wp.me/p3Xihq-MI
Connie Vines http://connievines.blogspot.com/
Margaret Fieland http://margaretfieland.wordpress.com
Rachael Kosinski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.comPeace,

Stormy Weather

 

My novels are all set in summertime, my favorite season. In Promiscuous Mode, (a computer term) my work in process, the protagonist, Laura, is consumed by problems and conflicts. Weather symbolizes her issues. Just after she finds out the man who hired her is dead, she encounters his funeral procession in the rain. More rain pours down when a lowlife character is snooping on her life. Another incident is a thunderstorm on a lake when Laura is fishing with a friend and his daughter. They find an old boathouse to shelter in and of course something happens. More conflict, more problems. During another storm, someone snoops around the house where Laura has gone to keep a frightened young woman company. My husband says the North Woods have never had such a rainy summer.

In Festival Madness, the heat and dust at the Burning Man Festival echo the problems for main character Emma. A pea soup early morning fog in the Adirondacks delays the characters from their floatplane trip. Weather worms its way into everything. 

I use fog in World of Mirrors, as well. A thick blanket of it fog hovers over the Baltic, and my characters must cross the shipping lanes in a tiny sailboat with no wind and a noisy motor. Bad guys are searching for them. Nothing good happens. I almost scared myself writing those scenes. 

My only novel with a winter scene is The Shadow Warriors. The protagonist passes information on a park bench in the Boston Public Garden on a frigid day. No swan boats, no flowers, just danger and drama. That’s good isn’t it? 

Characters freezing, sweating, wet, bedraggled, suffering.  That’s what we like in fiction. And the story can turn. Remember the thousands of daffodils that became the first sign of spring in Dr. Zhivago? What a welcome sight after a Russian winter.  

Make weather an antagonist in your fiction, and you have build-in drama and conflict. Man against nature. Hasn’t it always been that way?  

See what these bloggers have to say about weather and fiction. 

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Rachael Kosinski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Connie Vines http://connievines.blogspot.com/
Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
Helena Fairfax  http://helenafairfax.com/
Dr. Bob Rich http://wp.me/p3Xihq-EP
Victoria Chatham http://victoriachatham.blogspot.ca
Kay Sisk http://kaysisk.blogspot.com
Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

Secondary Characters? Secondary in Name Only.

Secondary characters have many functions in stories. Often, my secondary characters have surprised me, indeed, they have gobsmacked me. Who are some of my favorite secondary characters in my own works? In other books?  Read on.
In my first novels, I didn't understand about plotting, and the stories underwent much critiquing and rewriting as I tried to make them good.  One of the (many) things I had t learn was to go deep into each character if he/she  appeared multiple times.  
In The Shadow Warriors, my first published novel, there was a "bad guy" named Stephan, a secondary character.  Truth be told, I modeled his physical appearance and even some of his personality on a co-worker whom I didn't like. He didn't like me, either.  We exasperated each other.  Then, we were thrown together on an important corporate committee.  Not only did we see each other daily, but we had to work together.  Familiarity bred__not more dislike but understanding.  I would never say friendship, but I learned where he was coming from.  We started to like each other.  Just a little.  And as like grew, the Stephan in The Shadow Warriors became more complex, and at the book's end, he did a magnanimous act.  It helps to know your characters. 

Festival Madness, my Burning Man novel,  has a lot of zany characters. Sometimes, when I need to get a character from point A to point B I'll have something happen en route, something important to the story, which can mean a new character, but the reader doesn't know that the person will be important. Sometimes I, the writer, don't know how important that character will become.  When the protagonist, Emma, is driving from Reno, NV to the Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert, she stops by Pyramid Lake to enjoy the scenery.  (It is spectacular.)  Someone nearby is having car trouble, and Emma asks is she can help.  She is astonished and a little rattled when she sees this person closeup.  It is a man?  A woman?  It is Daze, soon to be Daisy, a man undergoing a change of gender.  Right away I liked Daze and his/her sense of humor.  I even bought a book by a woman who had changed her gender.  Daze became, while still a secondary character, important to the plot of the book. And she emerged as a full blown personality from that one encounter seen looking under the hood of her  (glittered encrusted) car. 

Festival Madness is free on the Amazon Kindle from March 18 - March 22nd.  Catch Festival Madness!

The novel I'm currently working on, Promiscuous Mode, (a computer term) has a character, a female Episcopal priest called Reverend Josie, who is modeled on a good friend of mine from college.   She was always eccentric, and when I introduced the character (as a distraction for waiting for another character to appear), I didn't know it was my friend, I just knew I was describing her garb.  Suddenly, she appeared again in the story, and then again. With her French phrases, her odd  speech and her all black wardrobe, she stood out among the somewhat bland corporate types.   My friend died during the writing of the book, and if /when it's published, I'll dedicate it to her.  Writing about her was almost like reliving our friendship, as we seldom saw each other after college.   

An anecdote from college days: I stopped by my friend's dorm room so that we could walk to our gym class--all the way across the campus and usually a total bore. She was reading Epicurus and began reading aloud.  Suddenly we had a bottle of vodka, and after each saying of Epicurus, we'd shout, "I'll drink to that," and swig the vodka.  We left for gym class (finally) and probably staggered all the way.  I remember hysterical laughter.  It was so like her.  Crazy but fun. We had a wild time at a party in the Adolphus Hotel before a Cotton Bowl. 
I never do outrageous stuff like that anymore, and sometimes, I wish I did.   

What other authors have secondary characters I like?  Old Toby in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet.  Rat, in the Easy Rawlins stories of Walter Mosley, and Maria Bolkonskaya in War and Peace.  So different all, and yet all so memorable.  

Who is YOUR favorite secondary character?  My fellow bloggers will surely have a lot to say on the subject.  Give them a read. 

Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Connie Vines http://connievines.blogspot.com/
Victoria Chatham http://victoriachatham.webs.com/
Helena Fairfax  http://helenafairfax.com/
Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/
Rachael Kosinski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
Hollie Glover http://www.hollieglover.co.uk
Dr. Bob Rich http://wp.me/p3Xihq-CZ
Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com/

Writing Projects For This Year

Finally, finally, I want to finish a short story I began years ago.  It is set in the 1950's in the summer in Flagstaff, Arizona at the time two commercial flights collided over the Grand Canyon.  An Indian Powwow was also taking place in Flagstaff.  A teenager is visiting town with her dad who is on a business trip.  Weird stuff happens.  My writing group says, "not much happens."  Yes and no. 

Project # two is another short story, told from the point of view (POV)  of a cat.  A lot happens.  To the cat.  This is based  on a true story, and it's something I have wanted to write for years.  So why haven't I? 

Project # three is a rewrite of a mystery novel I wrote a while back. It was always my critique group's favorite novel of mine.  I liked the story, the setting and the characters.  Went back to re-read and see why it  had never sold.  In the intervening years, I've become a better writer.  And the story needed work.  Pruning.  Whole chapters came and went where not much (maybe even NOTHING happened.)  So the rewrite is coming along.  My NEW (different people) writing group is not convinced, but they are all writing thrillers.  This book has to build. Lots of stuff happens, but not right away, except for the murder.  The sleuth has to feel her way into a strange town and a difficult situation.  Have I set myself up to fail?  Hope not.  Still like the story, the characters and the setting, which is the Northwoods of Wisconsin.  

Other projects:  meet with my agent and find out what's going on with my two novels that she is trying to sell. 
Clean out tons of old projects and useless paper from my office.  This is a tough one.  Why do I keep procrastinating? 

Decide if I want to do a Civil War story I've been keen on.  Is it a short story or a novel?  Maybe a novella.  The thing is, there's a huge amount of research in front of me, and maybe it's only a short story.   What to do? 

Last thing:  some PR to give my last novel, Festival Madness, a shot of adrenaline.  
Last, last thing:  maybe a cookbook?  
So many projects, so little time. 

What keeps so many projects on the back burner?  Inertia, laziness, not enough time, and I don't even know what. Read what the writers below are fixating on for 2016.   Do we all have the same issues?  

Oh yes, and I need to try to sell another short story I've been sitting on.  When I'm looking for something to do, I can always re-read this post. 
Writing is hard.  But you knew that. 

The Late, Much-loved Thisbe, who always inspired my writing

Victoria Chatham http://victoriachatham.blogspot.ca
Margaret Fieland http://www.margaretfieland.com/blog1/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Connie Vines http://connievines.blogspot.com/
Bob Rich  http://wp.me/p3Xihq-Bm
Rachael Kosinski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
Kay Sisk http://kaysisk.blogspot.com
Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
Hollie Glover http://www.hollieglover.co.uk
Helena Fairfax  http://helenafairfax.com/
Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com/