My Girls

A few weeks ago, I wrote up a piece about how I made my boys for my books.  Today is the corresponding article about my girls.  I don't have a single word to describe them to center their characters.  Something like that would be awfully convenient.  However, I didn't think to do that at the time.  Instead, I'll say what I was thinking of when I wrote them.

Christina Witten - Whenever You Want: I don't know about you, but I have always thought that if being an escort was actually only escorting shy men around, that it might be an interesting career.  Using that idea as the premise, I imagined a girl who got roped into being an escort somewhat against her will.  People are always curious about how much of myself goes into my characters - especially the female protagonist.  In the case of Christina... she's not much like me.  She doesn't look like me or think like me and only a random line escapes her mouth that betrays who is supplying her with her dialogue.

Juliet Hudson - Kiss of Tragedy: Juliet is based on young adults I met when I first left home.  I kept staring at them and wondering, "Is this your first time out from under your parents' thumb?  Is that why you're acting like this?"  The way Juliet acts at the beginning of the book is almost incomprehensible to me, except that I saw other young women, fresh from their mother's apron strings, do things way less sensible than Juliet.  She might be a personification of what I would do if I had no brain, but I enjoy that in a weird sort of way.  It's kind of interesting to let go.  Of course, eventually, the innocence is gone and experience comes into play.  That's when she becomes more, even more than I am.

Sweeper - The Blood that Flows: As I have explained before, this book was published ten years ago and is out of circulation.  It is not a romance novel, and I don't think I gave Sweeper a last name.  The Blood that Flows is a novel about two sisters.  One is a vampire teetering toward destruction and the other is Sweeper, a clever girl who is trying desperately to save her sister.  Though Sweeper is going through something difficult that is vastly more violent than any of my experiences, the book is a thought experiment I did to sort through something that was actually happening to me.  That doesn't make Sweeper me.  There are no parallels for the other characters in real life. Maybe I wrote the whole thing as therapy.  In the end, I have become the sort of person who will not stop someone from ruining their life.  Go... ruin your life... if that's what you really want.

Paige Waters - Rose Red: When I think of Paige, I think of what could have happened to me if I had chosen the wrong man.  Not that anything as crazy as what happens in Rose Red was actually on the table in real life, but how she feels.  How she holds herself back from happiness because of her own expectations.  She expects love to be dirty because that's all she's known.  She doesn't think anything amazing could happen because it feels like nothing amazing has happened so far.  Amazing things must not be real, even when they're happening in front of her face.

Sarah Reagan - Behind His Mask: With all my heart... Sarah is not me.  But I've met dozens of versions of her.  She's a girl sitting next to me in chemistry class.  She's telling me about how she's babysitting that weekend.  She's telling me she has a crush on a guy who is out of her league and who she clearly does not understand at all.  She's telling me how she's friends with his mother.  She's blushing and very pretty, but the guy she wants doesn't see her.  If he came up to her at that very moment, he would merely deliver a piece of information and saunter off, completely unaware of the mad beating of her heart.  AND I GOT TIRED OF IT.  Sheesh... I can't stand it another minute.  I want to haul her off to finishing school.  NOT DUMB-TIRED-ASS 1800's finishing school, but finishing school by Stephanie.  There, I would teach her how to get the attention of that guy (make him look at her like she's a romantic option), but also how to get him to tell her all about himself, so she knows whether or not she wants to be with him because right now, she knows nothing about him.  NOW OBVIOUSLY, that is not what happens in the book.  Sarah gets Evander to see her as a woman and gets him to tell her all those private things about himself without me ripping her personality out from under her.  *pant... pant*  BUT the outlandishness of the story has to be there because otherwise, our girl is not going to get what she wants.  After deep study and contemplation, there was no way for her to get that guy without a MASSIVE INTERVENTION.  So, I became Emi and messed everything up.

Beth Coldwell - His 16th Face: Beth is based on a little girl crying her face off at my wedding.  Her arms and legs are wrapped around my husband and she is bawling like the world is coming to an end.  I had been aware that this little girl was in love with my boyfriend for a few years, but she was very little and how much she adored him was genuinely interesting.  I stood there in my wedding dress and watched curiously.  Truthfully, I wasn't even a bit annoyed.  The man she was crying over was made of pure gold from his crooked smile, to his widow's peak, to the kindness that sparkled in his eyes.  She wept like he was dead.  And I wondered, how many things would have to be different in order for her to get him?  Well, it was a lot.  Almost everything.  Scratch that.  Everything would need to be different.  And I made Beth. 

Veda Fastille - Hidden Library: Veda is the closest approximation of what I'm like in real life.  The largest difference is that she's a witch and I am not.  I'm a novelist.  Otherwise, it's not that different.

Shannon Bilx - If I Tie U Down: I love Shannon.  She is everything I can't be.  I want to write on everything, but I'm so friggin' prim and proper in my damn pantihose that I can't take a fat silver marker and write 'nothing else matters' on the side of a bus shelter... or anywhere else.  Shannon does everything I can't do.  Bless her!  Bless her!

As a proper little story spinner, I have five novels I'm supposed to be writing after If Diamonds Could Talk.  It's really amazing how all the girls coming up are so different from each other.  It's a smorgasbord of feminine charm.  Look out for my next book!

My Boys

Sometimes I think my writing career really began with my book Whenever You Want.  It was my 14th book, but most of what I wrote before that was not very good, so I started my career with Whenever You Want.  Today's post is about my main male characters and how I built them.  

What I like to do when I'm making a man for the audience to fall in love with at the same time as our heroine, I like to choose a word to describe him to help center his character.  Today, I'm going to share the words I used to build my men.  Let's get started.

Mark Lewis - Whenever You Want: The goal with Mark was simple.  I wanted to make a man who was a REASONABLE man to be Christina's first love.  In a lot of ways, everything that I wrote before this book was nothing more than practice, and I knew that, so I wanted to keep my expectations low.  When I read the book as a more mature novelist, I see that I accomplished what I set out to do.  However, I also prefer Dominic to Mark (even though he is the antagonist), and whenever I do a public reading for this book, I always choose to highlight a scene where Dominic brings it all out.  Actually, I see myself grabbing Dominic by the neck like he's a kitten and using him as a main male lead in another story.  I don't know when that will be, but I love him so much, I might just do that someday.

Seth Halkias - Kiss of Tragedy: His word may surprise a few of you.  It's OBEDIENCE.  This book is organized like it's paying tribute to Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake.  So, in the first half of the book our main girl, Juliet is acting like a baby and she's not getting the best out of Seth because she's still expecting him to lead her.  By the second half of the book, we know all that is wrong, and our girl has taken complete control.  By this point in the book, Seth will do anything she asks of him.  I'm not sure how many women get to experience this because men are so often insistent on being dominant, but having someone be willing to obey your every word because they love you completely is an element of romance I wanted to explore.

Tate Crosswood - The Blood that Flows: This book was published ten years ago and is now out of circulation.  I may re-release it if I see a decent enough gap in my writing schedule that I have the time to polish it up a bit.  His word is DEPENDABILITY.  This book is not a romance novel.  It has a few elements of a romance novel, but the resolution does not have anything to do with falling in love, or being in love, or being together.  Tate makes it his responsibility to be there for our girl when she needs him the most.  Like the best film noir, you fall in love, get hit hard, but by the end, the world has changed so completely that when the story fades out at the end, everyone must reconstruct their reality.  Maybe he and Sweeper get together in that new world and maybe they don't.

Harrison Fox - Rose Red: Harrison's word has a double meaning.  His word is APPRECIATION.  It means that he's grateful.  He's so incredibly grateful to have Paige in his life, it almost brings me to tears thinking about it.  The second meaning for the word is: gaining in value.  He appreciates.  As I was reading some fresh comments about Rose Red, I began to wonder how many women feel appreciated in their lives.  His character also improves as the story progresses, so you can see Paige's influence on him.  By the end, he's golden.

Evander Chaney - Behind His Mask: Evander was built a bit differently than most of my other male leads.  His word is STRIPPED.  If you read the book, you'll see how he is literally and figuratively stripped in the book.  Part of the goal of his character is to change the minds and hearts of the reader.  He begins the story by being everything that is usually portrayed in a romance novel hero.  He's intelligent, muscular, affluent, rich, and good-looking.  By the end of the book, all that is gone.  He's so enraged, he can't think and he's partly crazy as he scribbles on the wall.  His muscles have been ridiculed because he's been a jester, not a knight.  Not only that, but his muscles are a bit of a threat to our girl, Serena (Sarah) because she would not like to be forced into a deeper physical relationship.  By the end, his family is revealed as a complete mess.  His poverty is uncovered, and his good looks are lost because he begins to look like his father, which Sarah finds completely repellant.  The reason this book is supposed to change the minds and hearts of the reader is that the standard man that is created for the entertainment of romance novel readers... he's a fantasy.  This book is meant to encourage the reader to have a real-life romance with a real man without the false expectations that are created by unrealistic but constantly repeated male characters.  Good luck, girls! 

Christian Henderson - His 16th Face: Christian is the best male character I've ever written.  In order to make him, I had to use four body models and three character models.  That's a lot.  The most I had ever used before this was five models to make Evander.  Sometimes, I don't even have to use any.  My man just pops into my head like he was there all along.  Christian is my masterpiece.  His word is SACRIFICE.  I'm working on the sequel, If Diamonds Could Talk, right now, so I'm not in a great place to talk about Christian, so I'll leave it at that.

Salinger Meriwa - Hidden Library: Hidden Library is the sequel to Behind His Mask, and so Salinger has a tough act to follow with everything that happened to Evander and Sarah in the first book.  His word is DOGGEDNESS.  Salinger has a plan and his plan is in direct opposition to Veda's plan.  He wants to win her over, but she's determined to slam the door in his face.  For quite a large percentage of the book, what he tries to do in order to connect with her doesn't work.  He has to keep trying and trying in order to get through to her.  When he finally gets there, it's quite glorious.

Fletch Litman - If I Tie U Down: This character is so vivid to me, I worry that he'll be annoyed if I say something about him that he doesn't like.  His word is FLEXIBILITY.  Fletch is not thrown by changes in circumstance.  He's very willing to do all kinds of things, like a person who doesn't know his limits.  His flexibility is so intense that his attitude changes on a dime as he sticks to his priorities.  Honestly, I feel a little in love with him whenever he talks and I have great hopes that this book will eventually enjoy as much success as Whenever You Want.

These are the men from the books that I've released.  I have five unfinished projects at the moment.  When I say 'unfinished projects', I mean books that do not have a complete first draft yet.  I'm on draft three for If Diamonds Could Talk.  But, as a teensy sneak peek into the project I have in mind for after I finish up Diamonds, the word for my latest man is GAMBLER.  I could squeal, I'm so excited.  He's going to set the world on fire!

Here's a link to my bookstore on Amazon, in case you haven't read any of my books and you'd like to.  I sell them cheap!

https://www.amazon.com/Stephanie-Van-Orman/e/B07YBTPPGQ?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1628525527&sr=8-1