Whose Character Is This Anyway...?

He’s fleshed out in my head. Perfectly. A Gene Krupa look-a-like. Check. A big guy, a thug. Check. Dark hair. Check. Sleepy eyes. Yes. Full lips. Oh, yes. Age? Forty. Good. That’s him. That’s the hero of my story. Ready, set, go.

Stop.

What’s that? Betty says he needs to be younger. He should be in his thirties. His thirties, she says? Okay, okay. That’s doable. Thirties it is. Once again, hands poised over the keys, I’m ready to begin.

Wait.

What now, Betty? Oh, he should be more refined, not quite so thuggish. A step up from a thug, perhaps just a gentlemanly mobster. Yes, my mind calculates. I can see it. Of course. Drop the street talk, let him be more educated. Own a joint, not just work it. Back to work I go.

Well, hell.

Excuse me? What difference does it make if he has a hairy chest or not? Betty, you ARE joking, right? What’s wrong with a smooth chest? Ah. Betty thinks hairy chests are sexy. She would never be attracted to a smooth chested man.

Not being a selfish author, I would never dish up a character to Betty that she wouldn’t be attracted to. After all, Betty is my female eye, my pulse on the sex appeal of my book.

By now, my character has been transformed—but only slightly, just minor tweaks here and there—but he’s still recognizable, still looks like Gene Krupa. Hell, though, with Betty’s alterations, he IS Gene Krupa. But I can still pull it off, produce a gangster-type hero who still fits pretty much into my original vision. Who knows? The changes may make him even better.

Hold your horses.

Now Betty disapproves of my character’s girlfriend, says she’s too young for my Gene Krupa look-a-like. I have to take Betty’s opinion into serious consideration. Betty is a mature woman, after all, whose age group will encompass a good deal of my reading audience. So now my character’s girlfriend has been changed to be a woman closer to his age.

But who knew?

Now Mary, another reader, weighs in. Mary is younger than Betty, and feels passionately that the character should be with a younger woman. Not only that, but she insists that the heroine be a virgin. The hero, Mary is convinced, would never marry a woman who was not virginal. And Mary feels SO strongly about this issue that she says she will not read the book if the heroine is not a young virgin, and, furthermore, will not speak to me anymore it this demand isn’t met.

Literary blackmail. Betty and Mary become mortal enemies. Who wins? Does a coin toss now decide my hero’s fate? Eenie meenie miney mo?

You think I’m joking. I’m not. This scenario actually happened to me.

What did I decide to do? Who won…Mary or Betty? Neither. The hero won. I was forced to rely on the old tried-and-true decision maker: my gut. It took some cleansing, but I managed to sterilize my brain of all suggestions and start from scratch, just let my man evolve from his origin in my imagination. I put HIM in the driver’s seat, told him…YOU steer, buster.

A writer has to be careful in selecting reading buddies. If they are close friends, you sometimes feel the need to mold the story to their vision, not yours. Sometimes they have characters in their own heads and want for you to bring them to life for them. And that’s when their contributions can be deadly for your writing. You, like I, might find yourself torn—even to the point of damaging your friendship—if you can’t accommodate their ideas.

I DO have a crit partner. She’s priceless. She watches for what she calls ‘commercial breaks’ in the stories—those elements that don’t gel, don’t flow. She doesn’t always agree with me. I don’t always take her input for gospel. All right, well, maybe about 99-3/4% of it, but who’s counting? 

We agree, we disagree. Most of the time, I fight her suggestions tooth and nail, just to let her know I’m in charge of the story; but, more often than not, I incorporate her ideas into the work. I trust her judgment, her instinct. So far, I've been lucky, because my own instinct has coincided with hers. If it doesn’t, it just doesn’t, and we’ve agreed those indecisive issues will be an editor’s call.

So far, she hasn’t threatened crit-partner blackmail over any of our differences. And, remembering my ordeal with Betty and Mary, I suppose I must be really, really grateful.

Who reads your work while you’re writing it? Close friends? Strictly other writers? Actual crit partners?

How far do you allow them to go with their input? How seriously do you take that input? How do they respond when you disagree? When you stand fast to your own idea and have to say ‘no’ sometimes?

Have you ever had a Betty/Mary situation? And if you did, how did you resolve it?

I’d love to know.

Please Don't Forget Me...

Please remove your shoes before entering. You are about to step into the hallowed area of my romantic heart.

For those who don't already know him, I’m going to introduce you to the fictional sachem of my heart, one of the most beautiful characters I’ve ever read. This character is so beautiful, rich, luscious, ethereal, while somehow managing to be one hot bad-ass—I think of him and I hear Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, I see ancient red and gold tapestry, taste dark wine, feel cool grass beneath my feet, drown in deep brown eyes, kiss full sensuous lips, make passionate love in the still wee hours of the morning in Hollywood Forever Cemetery (yes, you heard me—a cemetery). I spiral helplessly into powerful orgasmic pleasure when he takes me, when he enters me and when he…bites me.

The character who is the high priest of sensuality, the prince of passion, the god of love in my fantasy world?

He is called Donte Fedelta. He is a vampire. A five-hundred-year-old Italian vampire. And he is one of the main characters in Z. A. Maxfield’s book, Notturno.

Donte is the classic tall, darkly handsome continental. An elegant, cognac drinking, expensive cigar smoking Italian count who is described as having a demonically beautiful face, long and angular, hooded eyes, high cheekbones, wine darkened lips. He is who Bela Lugosi only wishes he could be.

I fell in love with Donte before I even read Notturno, with nothing more than a scene from an excerpt. In this scene—at the very beginning of the book—Donte follows the main character, Adin Tredeger, into the cramped restroom aboard an airplane. The beautiful Italian vampire ravages Adin in this small space in one of the most erotic encounters I’ve ever read. Needless to say, it catapults the story into a startling, highly sensual, exquisitely disturbing start.

The pièce de résistance is when, after having his way with the dazed Adin, after leaving his mark and drinking of Adin’s blood, the gorgeous vampire straightens his clothes and politely, gently beseeches, Por favore, non dimenticarmi—please don’t forget me.

What makes this delicate plea so remarkable is that Donte has no intention of letting Adin forget him; but, being true to his aristocratic bearing and his genteel nature…well…he must of course ask, anyway.

At those words—so unusual, so delicate after such a forceful, titillating sex scene—Donte Fedelta owned me, lock stock and barrel.

The fact that this enigmatic creature can get into Adin’s mind and, just by a touch of the hand, is able send him into shattering climactic paroxysms is not a bad gift to possess. In one scene, both highly sexy and hilarious, Donte does just that in a restaurant. After Adin is helplessly sent into an orgasm with Donte’s touch—practically by mental ventriloquism—in a scenario that even Sally who met Harry could not match, the engaging vampire innocently asks, Complet, mon cherie, Adin? Priceless.

Who understands the mysterious mechanics of our minds? Certainly not me. I only know this fragile beauty, all bound in a big, strapping, jet-haired, dark-eyed, powerful man’s body arouses me, turns me on. The delicacy, the elegance, with which this character speaks, acts and thinks, offset by his immensely frightful, demonic power is the stuff good characters are made of.

If a man can be created who is so compelling that the reader finds themselves believing in vampires—no, begging to be devoured by a vampire—he is a well-written character.

When the reader is able to feel the character’s cool skin, taste his lips, see in vivid color as he (in one memorable scene that sticks stubbornly in my mind) rushes down the stairs of his villa, dressed in a white shirt and slacks, a golden robe billowing behind him, he is a marvelously fleshed-out character.

Such small details perhaps seem insignificant. Or are they? For such minute features to fix themselves in one’s mind so strongly that they can almost reach out and feel the silky texture of the robe, hear the soft swoosh of the fabric as the character walks is masterful artistry. Furthermore, if a character was not so colorfully, intimately projected, would the reader ever even notice these seemingly unnoticeable touches? Probably not. But when one is so hungry for the unforgettable character, feasting on every word, every nuance, every microscopic detail that is part of the man, these things are absorbed and cherished.

Since, as always, this is not a book review, I won’t divulge too much of the plot, except to say that Adin Tredeger is an authority on antique erotica and he has acquired a five hundred year old journal which is a written and sketched account of an Italian count’s forbidden affair—amore vietato—with a young lover named Auselmo.

The journal is titled Notturno and the author was none other than Donte Fedelta. I won’t tell you how Donte was ‘turned’ vampire or why. But the vampire wants his precious book back—as it is his only physical memory of Auselmo who was murdered—and he relentlessly follows Adin to retrieve the journal.

Thus begins a richly woven love story of Donte and his mortal love, Adin.

That is all of the story I’ll tell you; however, I will say that the journal entries themselves are some of the most beautiful prose I have ever read. I found myself mesmerized by the beauty of Donte’s thoughts, his erotic mind. These luscious entries, so fluid and exotic, could stand alone, separate from the book. I had to shake myself while reading them, reminding myself that some beautiful vampire did not really write them—that he was indeed only a fictional character.

An example: Auselmo, so lovely, like an angel fallen to earth to tease and mock me with his beauty, or this: There were more stars in the sky this summer, Auselmo, because you placed them there me for me every time you smiled.

Adin Tredeger is a delightful, sexy, handsome man with a wonderful dry wit, and he supplies some of the most memorable lines in the book. I ADORE him. He’s a man I’d love to love in real life. And his pairing with this serious but oddly comedic vampire is pure genius. They are a dynamic partnership.

Now, once again, since this is NOT a book review, I’m only supplying this buy link  

http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowBook.php?book=NOTTURNO

because…well…because…you might like to read the steamy excerpt—the high-octane, squirm-in-your-seat scene from the airplane bathroom—for yourself. And while you’re at it, there’s a hot trailer as well.

Anyone who knows me knows my weakness for Italian men. I make light of it, but in truth it’s more than just a one-track libido. It’s something, some beautiful man who looms in the shadows, just beyond the light in my mind, a face I know intimately even though I can’t see its features. He’s beautiful, dark, sensual. He’s part of me, he IS me to a certain extent.

Who knows? A lover from a past life? Maybe he’s ME from a past life. Whoever he is, I recognized him the moment Donte Fedelta softly asked, after a torrential bout of love-making in a cramped airplane bathroom, for Adin to please not forget him.

Donte, the ageless, tormented, beautiful, powerful aristocratic vampire in Notturno who, through Z. A. Maxfield’s pen to my heart, became the face to the Italian of my erotic dreams.

And it was as though Maxfield tapped into my consciousness and painted this beautiful creature—monster, Donte says he is—who has haunted my dreams and imagination as long as I was old enough to appreciate a beautiful man.

Donte, please. Just one bite. Just one. I promise. I’ll never forget you, Caro. Oh, wait. He’s not real, is he? Damn.

Can I Kiss You...?

My thoughts today weren’t really writing-related, and I started not to write them at all. But the feelings in my gut are just too strong. I’ve got to try to express them.

A few years ago, my daughter met a tall, lanky, good looking young man at a typical Texas poolside bar-b-que. She was so struck by him—something about him, besides his obvious looks—that, very uncharacteristically for her, she approached him and heard the words coming from her mouth, “Can I kiss you?”


That kiss lasted three years. They married. Oh, sure, they have their ups, they have their downs. But they’ve weathered them. And the way this young man—his name is Mike—weathered these ups and downs, the way he managed to protect my daughter fiercely while growing into his own maturity has endeared him to me. He is the proverbial son I never had.


Well, Mike has been diagnosed with lung cancer. He’s thirty-five years old. Monday, he goes for two days of testing at M.D. Anderson in Houston to chart an approach to treatment. The doctors are confident, optimistic for his prognosis. They feel his age, his good health and strength are positives. But, of course, there’s the anxiety. The word cancer just does that to people.


While I feel confident, too, it’s made me look so hard at my feelings for Mike, my love for him. For my daughter. And I realize I love him every bit as much as I love her.


He and my daughter are supportive of my writing. One of the most touching things about this support is: Mike told me that, in their cabin at Rayburn Lake, he planned for the attic/bedroom to be a writing room for me. The fact that he took my writing seriously enough to incorporate a space for it in their country get-a-way was one of the most beautiful things anybody had ever done for me since I started writing. Hey, I was flattered just by the fact that they included me in their resort cottage (I AM the mother-in-law, after all!), so the thought of getting my own writing room blew me away! And touched my heart. Really, really touched my heart. And we took it as a sign that the former owners of the cottage had left behind an old electric typewriter.


Although the cottage is being sold now, the beauty of their support still lingers and continues to be  a force that drives me. They are proud of me. THAT pride means more to me than a million writing rooms.


I am a slow writer. I’ve slacked and just can’t seem to get to that last paragraph, the words the end, of anything I’ve ever written. It is not that I do not write well. It is not that my stories are not good. I can’t tell you WHY I haven’t finished anything.


But I’ve made a pact with myself. A pact my beautiful son-in-law and daughter do not even know about yet. And it is this: I’m going to finish my WIP. I am going to dedicate it to them. I’m going to make them proud, to create a finished PRODUCT to give back the work that their support deserves. Sure, maybe that’s no reason to write. But it’s not why I’m writing. It’s why I’m going to FINISH.


So, Mike. My son. Let’s make a deal. You fight your battle, and I will support you through every second of it. And I will fight my writing battle and make you proud because YOU have been there for me.


I’m so glad my daughter walked up to this wonderful man on that sultry summer day and asked, “Can I kiss you?” It changed her life in beautiful ways forever, and it changed mine, too.

This is NOT a Book Review...

This is not a book review. It really isn’t. So remember, when you read my next words—even though it LOOKS like a book review of a book and character I'm crazy about—it only seems that way. So...since you can't see my nose growing like Pinocchio, I'll continue.

The big focus lately in my writing journey has been on my characters. A lot of thought has gone into whether they’re real, whether a reader will embrace them. Naturally, my mind motored to other writers’ characters, particularly the ones who impressed me the most, the ones who still linger in my mind.


I zeroed in on one specific writer, a specific character. And that is the hero from LA Heat by P.A. Brown. The character? David Eric Laine. Oh, I even love his name. Not just David Laine. But David ERIC Laine.


David Eric Laine is a cop, one of Los Angeles’ finest. He’s a hunky package of testosterone in a not-conventionally handsome package. He’s not classically good looking. He’s big—what? pushing six-foot-four?—pock-marked face, swarthy, curly dark hair. Not a face that would draw stares on the street, but he IS the kind who can knock the knickers off you if you accidentally venture too close to his powerful masculine vortex, his smoldering chemistry. I believe P.A. Brown described him as a young Tommy Lee Jones. In short, MY kind of man. The kind of man I’d want to bed, to do everything to that is implied with ‘bedding’ him. The kind of man I would notice on the street, who I’d throw myself on the floor in front of in a bar.


In LA Heat, we’re introduced to the love of David Eric Laine’s life, the most beautiful man he’d ever seen—gorgeous, blond, well-dressed, classy computer geek Christopher Bellamere.

Since this is NOT a book review, I won’t tell you the story, only that this exquisite creature is the catalyst that brings David out of the closet where he’s been hiding his homosexuality. They begin a relationship that could be a ride at Six Flags—ups and down, hot, cold, crazy sexy, confusing. Christopher Robin Bellamere, in LA Heat, is a serial killer suspect, but his draw on the rugged cop is so strong that even this factor can’t keep them apart.

David Eric Laine refinishes furniture, has a modest house filled with these pieces, owns an antique Victrola, listens to 78’s of Alexander’s Got a Jazz Band Now and Chuck Berry. Diverse tastes. My man.


Laine’s not perfect, which I love about him. Sometimes I even want to kick his ass but then I think about his hairy chest and belly and his fat nipples and I forgive him.

To me, David Eric Laine is real. I believe him. I know him. I can see him, touch him, smell him, make love to him, knock him upside the Tommy-Lee-Jones-look-alike head then kiss him and make it better.


THAT, to me, is the power of writing a character. P.A. Brown did it in David Eric Laine.

Hell, I’ll even reveal a secret about myself that will tell you just how powerful this character IS to me.


Going through a particularly difficult spell of worrying recently with a family illness, I told Pat Brown that David was the kind of man I’d like to snuggle with at night. Not that he could make things go away, but he would at least be a real, solid, warm, cozy shelter to scrunch into. THAT is how real David Eric Laine seems to me. Not being able to think of any real-life men I knew to fit the bill, I instead dragged this fictional character into my mind who—oddly—is as real as any flesh and blood man I know.

I’ll even go so far as to confess that I even, for a fleeting moment—before reminding myself, for God’s sake, this man is make-believe—got jealous of annoyingly beautiful but lovable Christopher Bellamere because my dream man, David Eric Laine was with HIM and slept with HIM. Hmph!


This admission on my part will tell you one of two things: I am certifiably crazy, which may be true. Who knows? Or that P.A. Brown has painted one hell of a good character who the reader has to remind themselves he is indeed fiction. Many other readers, though, can attest to David Eric Laine’s believability and his charisma.

Like I said, this is NOT a book review. I know, I know, it sure looks like one. Why, if this were a book review, Iwould  leave a link to LA HEAT and all of P.A. Brown’s books, like THIS link: http://www.pabrown.com/ . And, furthermore, if this was a review, I'd give LA Heat a thousand-star rating. But do you SEE a rating anywhere here? See? Told you it wasn’t a review! It just….well…looks like one.

Truly Yours...

In a writers’ group recently, I participated in a really good conversation about knowing our characters, getting into their heads and—most importantly, being true to them.


The discussion began with a question of mine, a doubt about how quickly my two main characters fell in love. I hadn’t intended for them to fall with the speed of a piano from a five thousand story building. But they did. Without even consulting me, they just did it. The wonderful, inexplicable kind of love where they didn’t know when it happened or how it happened. It just happened.


In this snippet, I tried to explain it through my characters:

He rested his hand on my chest. “So we’re together now in your bed. Why are you crying?”

Because I love you, because I loved you the first time I saw you. I don’t know why, but I did. My heart ached with his beauty. Tender pain filled me because he wasn’t shocked or disgusted by my tears, only curious. I smiled. “I don’t know.”

Even so, I still had doubts as to the realism of this situation. Questions raced in my mind. Could two real people fall so fast? Should I have given them more time to develop their love? Does this happen in real life? Did I need to expand the story to create a more substantial reason for them to fall in love? If they are two men, does this make a difference in the time frame for love? Will a reader believe these two could have such an attraction? What to do? What do to?


Of course, I fell back on the advice: Be true to your character.


If the characters are spawns of my imagination—if I created them, who exactly am I going to be true to? Is there a formula, a psychology for individual characters, that a writer uses? Or is it just plain gut feeling? Questions, questions.


My big fear is that by driving their emotions and actions with my own instincts, they are merely doing what I would do, not what real people in real scenarios would do.


For example: I love to write gangsters, tough guys. The mobster guy image is only in my imagination, but do I really know what a gangster would do emotionally? Be true to the character, be true to the character, my inner voice beckons. Does that mean I pattern him after Edward G. Robinson or George Raft every time? Or can MY mobster maybe BE a teddy bear inside, be all schmaltzy, maybe even cry sometimes? A secret? The guy who’s crying in the snippet I shared? He’s a big tough guy. So maybe George Raft would never cry. My guy would.


But is it okay for him to cry? To be silly in love so fast?


This my question for you: What does being true to your character mean to YOU? Does it mean you research your characters’ types and go by actual personalities of real-life people? Do you have a rule of thumb: certain types would never do certain things?


Or do you just go by YOUR gut and put a big heaping dose of yourself into your creations? Do you let go and just let them…be?

And Then it Hit Me...

In my first blog, I wrote about the catalyst—a beginning sentence and an ending sentence—so generously offered by a dear writer friend that jump-started one of my WIP’s. And I loved reading everyone’s comments as to where their own seeds of inspiration originated.

Okay. That was a spark that ignited the beginning of a novel. But today, I want to go a step further to hear what sort of kick in the old keester gets YOU out of…oh, no, I almost said the WORD that I hate…writer’s block. Cringe. There. I said it. To me, it is imagination constipation. Now that doesn’t sound quite as dignified as writer’s block, does it? Not pretty, eh? Well, it indeed is NOT pretty!

I’ll start off with my most recent light-bulb incident with a current WIP. I needed a scene. A setting to plunk my characters into. That’s all. How hard could that possibly be? Apparently VERY hard, because for several days, my poor hero and heroine were stuck in an awful freeze frame, waiting for me to put them somewhere, and I couldn’t do it. I could only apologize to them as I left them suspended in some sort of awful character purgatory—not really in my head, but not in written word, either.

I stopped thinking about it and walked away from the computer. Damn writing. I’m going to lie on the couch. I’m going to watch life go by out the patio window, and to hell with my characters. If they want out of their limbo, then let THEM figure out a setting. Hey, you guys, wake me when you decide where you want to be.

Well, here’s the beautiful part. I stared out the window, mesmerized by the sunlight on a tall magnolia tree which stands to the right of my patio. The waxy leaves literally glistened in the evening light. For some reason, my mind wandered to a vision of a tree-house. I don’t know why, but it did. Picturing myself hidden among the big, leafy branches of a tree brought a relaxed, kid-happy smile to me.

Then I spotted something curling up through the balcony railing. Ah. Smoke. The neighbor below me had stepped out onto his patio to smoke. I can’t tell you how or why, but suddenly, my scene visualized. Clear as a bell, as if I were standing in the midst of the setting with the characters. I got chills. Lovely chills. I had my scene.

How? What WAS the scene? From that lazy cerebral wandering, I imagined my heroine hiding up in a tree house, getting away from problems in her home. And…oh, this is the part I love. The hero was standing against the tree trunk, smoking, completely oblivious to her there above him. His smoke, like my neighbor’s, snaked up to her as she watched him through the shimmering green leaves of an old oak tree.

I’m telling you, inspiration such as that, which springs from a totally relaxed mind, a mind that isn’t even LOOKING for an idea, is priceless and beautiful beyond comprehension. I wish, oh I wish, I had more revelations like this. They are few and far between. But I can tell you that my best ideas DO come in such a fashion. When and where I least expect them. God, how I love that.

So. You. I’m not idly asking you where your ideas come from. I really, really want to know. When you have imagination constipation, where do your scenes and settings, that dialogue that evades you—the whole shooting match that suspends YOUR characters in literary purgatory—what incidents have happened to free your mind and set them free?

He Poured Sugar into His Coffee…

He poured sugar into his coffee. Those words send chills up and down my spine. They give me shivers. All the soft, sensual kisses on my neck couldn’t send me into exquisite paroxysms of pleasure like that sentence.

What? Am I a sugar junkie? Sweets lover? Well, yes. But that’s got nothing to do with WHY these beautiful words—as the old fifty’s song says—send me.

He poured sugar into his coffee is the opening line of one of my current WIP’s. No, this is not my ego talking. I’m not in love with my own written words. It’s the story behind the sentence which makes it so precious to me.

I told a friend, who is a writer, that I wanted to begin a story, but I had no clear vision of the character or the plot. All I DID know was that, in my head, the hero of the story was gay. Hardly a foundation for a story, not even a cornerstone. Nothing.

My friend challenged me. He pitched two lines to me—a first line for the book and another for the last.

He said to start the book with the sentence ‘He poured sugar into his coffee’. The last sentence? I’m not telling THAT until the end.

It may sound silly, but it worked. Who knew? I typed the sentence, watched it form in black and white on the screen, thinking the whole time how impossible it would be to launch a complete book from that little handful of simple words.

But the moment the words left my fingers, when I touched the keyboard, my character was plunked straight from my mind into a cheesy railcar diner with miles of shiny chrome, red-and-white checkered floors, the smell of bacon, eggs and coffee, and tinkling bells over the door. In that diner, he met his lover and the story began.

To this day, I wonder if my friend actually waved a magic wand— perhaps sprinkled magic dust—over those words to anoint them. Or am I just one of those whose imagination needs a good kick in the ass to get started? I don’t know. I don’t want to know. It’s all too beautiful, the way the imagination works, to bother analyzing it.

And I love this story that I started. I love the character. I know him intimately now. And he’s even more beautiful to me because I marvel that he was conceived by a simple suggestion of pouring sugar into coffee. You know the old query: which came first, the sugar or the man?

I think, too, that this particular hero will always be my favorite BECAUSE of his unique conception. I hope the future will bring many companions to him, other heroes and heroines who are dreamed up in such special ways.

I’m going to ask YOU the same old tired question: What inspires YOU? What beautiful seeds have been planted into YOUR imagination that sprouted into your beloved characters? I’d truly love to know.