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!