The Characters in the Stories by Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor #writing #characters

 Once the Idea is in order and the Plot is decided upon, the characters must be found for your stories. There are a number of ways characters have ventured into my stories. The oddest one happened about a month ago. As I was falling asleep, a voice spoke in my head. "Hi. I'm Valentina Heartly. With a name like that I should write a romance novel." I haven't found a story for her as yet but the ideas are slowly forming.

Often when developing characters, I use Astrology. Now I don't cast their entire charts but I look at the Sun sign, the Moon sign and the Rising sign and combine these to make a person come to life. Then I use one of the many baby name books to find the right name.

Sometimes the characters are well established and are part of a series. At present I'm working on Murder and Iced tea staring Katherine Miller, now married. Along with Robespierre, he Maine Coon cat, I know her almost as well as I know myself. This time I am using many of the characters from the other stories in the series. There are also new ones. There's the Mayor, his wife, his two children and his "yes" man.

I once found a character in a research book on Egypt from a single sentence. "Mermeshu was his name." Amazingly he took form and set forth on a time travel story.

How do you find and name your characters? Sometimes, for me, this takes the msot time but I love Plots and they come fairly easy.

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After You've Sent The Book Off - Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #Writing #MFRWAuthor

After You’ve Sent the Manuscript Off.

 

After you’ve sent the manuscript off to the agent or editor, what do you do? Wait patiently for a report of start something new?

Since this is my latest release, I’m already well into the next story. Different sub-genre, This afternoon, I spent time with a friend who is fairly new to writing thought she has published several books. As we sat at a table in the mall waiting for people to ask questions about our organization, we talked about writing.

One thing she said gave me pause. She said she’d finished the edits on the book and sent it off. I asked her if she had started something new. She told me this was the first time she’d been able to do that. Usually when she sends a book out, she sits and waits to hear from all the agents or publishers before she starts on something new.

This sent me thinking about the other new writers I have known. Some of them have written that first book and sent it out. THEN THEY WAITED and waited. A few of them never wrote a second book. I really wonder how many writers wait to hear about the book that’s finished and off to an agent or editor and don’t write something new until they hear from all possible places.

I decided I was the odd one. Even while I was finishing the revisions and such on the first book I wrote, I was thinking about the next one. Now remember the first book I wrote made the journey from the house in a box with return postage included many times. By the time I finally did the very last revision using editor’s suggestions, I had three more books ready to send. Those were the days of snail mail.

These days things are different. Books are submitted electronically and can get a yes or no fairly quickly, most of the time. Still, sometimes it’s months between. Why do writers stay dormant? Puzzles me. My thought is when you type the end, you should have a good idea about what the next bok will be about. I’m at the midpoint of my recent write and I already know the opening lines of what will come next. So send out the book and start at least to plan the next one.

Though not the cover for the next one, this cover is for the first book in the trilogy.

 

From Bedroom to Book: Chili Run by Stuart R. West

From pillow to page...

Despite the rather enticing, come-hither title of this post (gotcha!), I'm not going to start writing erotica.

Rather, it's a round-about way to chat up my new comedy thriller, Chili Run.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, a kazillion times sorry!

Let's back up...

I have a vividly wild dream life, ranging from talking cat gangstas to bathrooms that eat people. After these strange dreams--during that oddly drifting, half-awake, half-asleep state of mind where the dreams still somewhat resemble logic--I think, "Hey! This would make a nifty book!"

Then, I wake up and think, "Man, what was I thinking?" No one wants to read an epic fantasy novel about a family of royal lions who fly 1930's fighter planes to save the kingdom. I shower, go about my day, the dreams drifting away like cottonwood in the wind.

This wasn't the case with Chili Run. This dream stuck with me, absurd though it was. I toyed with it, determined to find a way to make it work. I knew what the gist was; now I had the unenviable task of trying to make sense of it.

Well, here...the blurb says it best:

When Wendell Worthy decides to blow off laundry for the day, he has no idea he'll soon be running across downtown Kansas City in his tighty-whities. But a murderous, psychotic drug dealer has his brother and the ransom's a cup of chili that has to be delivered within two hours.  The catch? There are rules in place: no rides, no money, no help. And Wendell has to do it in his underwear. Regardless of the rules, he knows he can’t go it alone. The only person downtown who might help is Alicia. Too bad their one and only date ended in disaster. Wendell can run like the devil’s on his tail, and he’s gonna’ need to, because all sorts of hell’s about to break loose.

Okay, I know dream analysts are gonna have a field day with the subject matter. There's the requisite recurring nightmare of being caught out in public in your underwear (or nude). I pay it full tribute and absolutely own it.

Researching the book was a bear. To accurately describe downtown, Kansas City, my wife patiently drove me around so I could plot out Wendell's trajectory and, I hope, paint a unique, darkly comic, nightmare vista.

While there's a streak (ugh on the pun!) of humor running (again, ugh.) through the book, it's not as in-your-face, silly as my Zach and Zora comic mysteries, but it's a cousin of sorts. (There's even a quick connection for eagle-eyed readers to the aforementioned series, cementing it in the same universe). Here the stakes are higher and lives are hanging in the balance.

For me, the book's kind of an experiment. As Wendell runs through most of the book, I strove to keep the book moving along from one bizarre and dangerous adventure to the next. It's told in "real time," too, kinda' like the TV series 24 (while writing it, the soundtrack in my head consisted of that annoying "ka-ching, ka-chung" of 24's clock running down; plenty of aspirin were consumed).

What I thought was going to be an easy-peasy, cakewalk of a book turned into a huge struggle due to the above-mentioned reasons and more. I mean, honestly, how many different ways can you describe running?

Along the way, just like my protagonist's character, themes developed and grew, some understated, some not so much. It's about racism, writing, and above all--most surprising--it turned into a love story.

All in a little book about a guy running through public in his tighty-whities trying to save his dumb brother's life.

Chili Run: The perfect thriller for the reader on the go.

A Vivid Dream by Eleanor Stem

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Princess in the Woods

When I was young, probably nine or ten, I had a wild dream that spooks me to this day. It was winter, and dark outside. We lived in this small house I want to call a dacha (a country house or cottage in Russia). It had two rooms: a larger common area with a hearth, table and chairs, and a sleeping chamber, much smaller. The sleeping area was a series of platforms tacked to the wall, one above the other almost to the ceiling. We kids slept on the higher platforms, the adults on the lower.

No adults were at home. I must have been the eldest, and was in charge of some other children. 

A fierce storm raged outside. It had come up quickly, and did not give me time to close the shutters. I would have to go outside, but I was afraid I’d get lost in the driving snow that pricked your skin like needles.

The winter had dragged on for weeks, one storm after the other. Food was scarce. Wolves that normally howled at night, started doing it in the daytime. As the winter progressed they became more aggressive. Horses, dogs, and sheep were vulnerable. Wolves attacked people in their sleighs. They'd run up from behind, pull people off, and devour them on the icy road.

Tonight, with the adults gone, the shutters that slammed in the winds, the wolves became reckless, crazed in their hunger. They smashed in the windows of the front room. I pulled the children into the sleeping chamber and shut the door. Wolves surrounded the little house, ten or twenty, piled against the outside windows, growling, snapping their teeth.

Man attacked by wolves

Those inside slammed against the bedchamber door. In a panic, everyone screaming, we climbed from one sleeping shelf to the next, higher, toward the ceiling.

The windows burst with wolves. The door latch broke. Wolves jumped up against our climb to the higher sleeping levels. They were relentless, would not go away. Their fur brushed against my legs. They spewed vile odors from their snapping jaws, wild with bloodlust. We huddled together on the top shelf nearest the ceiling while the wolves snarled and fought each other. They climbed over themselves in an attempt to reach us, their eyes flashing with hunger. 

I awoke, filled with terror, shaking, and glad I was where I was, not in a small Russian cottage during a terrible winter. Needless to say, I’ve never liked really big dogs, like German Shepherds. I’d walk a mile out of the way to avoid one.

Do dreams have meaning? Where did this vivid scene come from? I was young, innocent. After years of thinking about this, I believe it was a memory from a past life, a memory that bled into this life. A not-so-good past life.

Scary Moment

I want to thank Wikicommons Public Domain for these pictures.