Meme - Day 29

Last one is tomorrow!

29. How often do you think about writing? Ever come across something IRL that reminds you of your story/characters?

I think about it every day ... and that doesn't always translate into doing it. I'm always thinking about my stories, the things I need to fix or adjust or things that I could add in. I see a lot in real life that reminds me of my stories or characters, because I tend to play a lot of "how would character x react to this?" or "what would so-and-so do if they were in this situation?" and I find it gets me thinking.

I wish I thought about my writing and it spurned me on to write. I find a lot of what I enjoy is just thinking about the possibilities - it's easier to think about what you want to write and how the final product will be instead of immersing yourself in the struggle and actually trying to get to that final product in real life.

Meme - Day 28

The home stretch!

28. Have you ever written a character with physical or mental disabilities? Describe them, and if there's nothing major to speak of, tell us a few smaller ones.

Angel Sheridan in Brookline University has a physical disability. Hers stems from an accident in her childhood when she was run over by a car. Her pelvis was crushed and legs were broken. She has the ability to walk, but didn't receive the best in physical therapy when she was younger. So she prefers to use a wheelchair when she can, but can also use crutches and walk and move around shorter distances. She has issues with her legs in terms of feeling, pain and numbness.

I originally conceived of her for another story, but it never got off the ground. When I thought about Brookline, I realized it would be a great place to use her. Originally in the other story Angel was an amputee.

I also injured a character in Sandy Cove. Maddy was injured during a gymnastics routine and suffered a spinal injury. She recovers slowly, regains the use of her legs after two operations, but she can never go back to doing gymnastics. It becomes a central part of the third book.

Meme - Day 27

Almost forgot ...

27. Along similar lines, do appearances play a big role in your stories? Tell us about them, or if not, how you go about designing your characters.

Appearances used to be important to me because I felt that it helped me with characterization. All of my early work I was very detailed with descriptions, even if they didn't make it into the final product. Since then I've found that it's better to just give the basics in look - hair colour, eye colour, any unique characteristics - but let the reader fill in the blanks when it comes to what the character looks like. My favourite part of reading is imagining the character, and if I knew exactly who the author had in mind, it might disrupt my own vision.

But for myself, I always have a clear vision, even to the point of casting the role with actors or models so I have physical references.

Meme - Day 26

This should be good lol.

26. Let's talk art! Do you draw your characters? Do others draw them? Pick one of your OCs and post your favorite picture.

I can't draw. I can barely draw stick figures. There is no way I would ever be able to accurately draw any character I thought of. Unless the character really looked like a stick figure.

I envy people with the skill to draw their characters, but I can't bring what I see in my head to a page. The best I do is cast actors or models or just plain people I see in ads or on TV or even in public into the roles. I've used friends as physical bases for characters, I've used actors, musicians, athletes, models etc. Sometimes I just have a vague idea and I search for a picture to represent them.

Joy and Libby were very early on based on an image of a woman I saw in a catalogue with red hair. I also found a picture of Heather Graham back in the early '90s, and her curly hair was like what I was looking for. I later used Israeli model Maayan Keret as a physical base for the characters, as she suited my vision of them exactly. You can see a picture of her here - http://snarkerati.com/profile_pics/Maayan-Keret.jpg

Meme - Day 25

Getting closer and closer to the end ...

25. Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.

Pets are one thing I have rarely given any of my characters.

I am a cat person myself, I'm not fond of dogs. Because of that I don't think I've ever included a dog in anything I've ever written. I also haven't given my characters cats, mostly because I feel like my characters move around so much, get up and go and do things that a pet would anchor them in one place (and thus, reality lol) so that they wouldn't have that freedom to just pick up and go.

I gave my character Ruby horses, as she rides. The horse riding aspect was a big part of her character - she was a trick rider. The horses were important to her, so I had to include them. Her horses were named after the constellation Orion (who was the sire of her two horses). Rigel was sold to her cousin as a racing horse, while she kept Bellatrix as her own trick riding horse, but was forced to sell her to her cousin shortly before the story begins. She's reunited with her horse at the beginning.

Meme - Day 24

A really interesting question today.

24. How willing are you to kill your characters if the plot so demands it? What's the most interesting way you've killed someone?

I actually realized through answering this question that I kill off someone in pretty much everything I write.

The first character I killed off was in Sandy Cove, and it was because when I had originally conceived of the series and wrote it, I had more characters than I knew what to do with. I ended up editing one out completely, and another I felt I could do a good job with if I killed her. I didn't feel it was so much that the plot demanded it, but that it would get rid of a character and also give the ones sticking around something to react to. It worked out well, I think.

I killed some characters in Brookline University as well, but I have not edited that part of the series yet, so there is a chance I might change things up a little bit.

I even managed to kill someone in my Christmas-themed novel, 'Tis The Season. There were suspense elements in the story, so it wasn't totally weird. I enjoy writing a lot of crime and suspense, and it naturally lends itself to deaths of characters. Out of sixteen novels, only one had no deaths.

I don't thnk anyone has died in an interesting way. I've used car accidents, murder (stabbing, strangulation, gunshot wound). Most have been conventional, in a manner of speaking, because I have focused on mostly realistic writing.

I did have the experience in writing something wishing I had killed a character. I see now it would have been a lot better for the story to have done it.

Meme - Day 23

Day 23 and still going ... almost done.

23. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story—from planning to writing to posting (if you post your work)?

I do Nanowrimo each year, so I usually start planning in October. I plot, do character profiles if I need to, and things like that. I begin to write on November 1st, with the aim of 1667 words per day. I get insanely competitive with myself. The first time I did Nano, I was terrified I wouldn't be able to finish, so I pushed myself and finished on day 22. I tried to beat my time each year. The shortest I've ever written my Nano novel in is 7 days (which is very physically painful and I don't recommend it for many reasons).

Other novels that I've written have taken a lot longer, but I don't work on them every single day. Nano is a great format for me to get into a habit of writing every day, even if it only lasts for 30 days. I need that kind of challenge and time competition to get really motivated to write something I otherwise would procrastinate on.

The editing is what takes so long now. I find now that I'm conscious of a lot of the writing mistakes I make, I am getting better and faster at editing my own work. Rewriting is something I haven't perfected yet - I really hate doing it - so if anything needs extensive re-writes, I am very slow with it. I've been working on Brookline University: Sophomore Year for over two years at this point.

Meme - Day 19 through 22

Another few days where I didn't get a chance to blog, so I'll make it all up here.


19. Favorite minor that decided to shove himself into the spotlight and why!

Hmm. I once wrote a YA novel called 'Tis The Season where the focus was supposed to be on the 18-year-old main character and her relationship with her twin sister, which instead turned into a bit of a suspense story because of the introduction of a bad guy to interact with said main character.

I actually really ended up liking the bad guy character, and I think that piece of writing was my first indication of being able to write crime and suspense characters well. He sort of took over a bit of the story, but in a good way.

I think Jamie Rayburn also did that in Brookline, for which I was grateful. I really like his background and who he is and think he's an interesting character, so I'm glad he decided to push his way forward. I always struggled writing male characters, so I was glad to find one that was relatively easy for me to write.


20. What are your favorite character interactions to write?

I really like writing relationships between twins. I have been drawn to twins and multiple births for years, and the relationship aspect really fascinates me. I use twins in just about everything I write.

The other thing I love is writing romance, especially with a character who is very reluctant to commit for whatever reason. I think it's challenging and a lot of fun to keep the character in character while showing them slowly opening up and learning how to trust other people.

21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?

That is something I've really avoided. I think because I am not at that stage in my own life, it's hard to give my characters children. I'd like to remedy that in the future and learn how to craft good parent/child relationships.

I recently wrote something in which a character I had written for years was older (than when I wrote her) and had a daughter. It was really interesting coming up with that kind of relationship, so I think I would definitely drift towards characters with older children rather than younger kids. I don't think I can write younger kids accurately at this point.

22. Tell us about one scene between your characters that you've never written or told anyone about before! Serious or not.

I had a scene between Ryan and Joy in a story that takes place after the Brookline University series. It was one of my first attempts at a sex scene, and was just awful. I use it to remind myself I've gotten better at writing sexual situations lol. I wrote it more to try and break out of the trouble I had writing sex scenes, and as bad as it turned out, I found it a useful exercise. The original will never find its way into my novel lol.

Meme - Day 18

18. Favorite antagonist and why.

Sometimes antagonists are my favourites in general, but usually in other peoples writing.

I almost always love the serial killer bad guy characters. The Surgeon in Tess Gerritsen's series was a favourite of mine. I think I like the fact that with serial killers and evil murderers, when you show their POVs, everything is totally justifiable to them. There's something I really like about being able to create a character that has no normal moral compass.

As far as antagonists in my own novels, I always loved to hate Melanie Wyndham from Brookline. At first she was the stereotypical "mean girl" just to be mean, but I have since come up with an interesting back story on her and I hope to weave it into the story a bit more to explain her actions.

I also liked the fact that I used characters people liked as antagonists in Sandy Cove. Niki's sisters often served as her antagonists, but her sisters were a lot of fun to write and just a bit out of control, not evil or anything. Maddy's sister April was often her antagonist. There were no "bad guys" in these antagonists, which I think a lot of people assume has to be the case.

Meme - Day 17

This one seems very similar to question 11, which was which character you like to write the most ...

17. Favorite protagonist and why

I'll answer this two ways.

My favourite protagonist in a published novel ... it really depends on my mood. I'm a huge fan of Stephen King's Roland Deschain (as well as others, so don't get me started lol). I also love Kathy Reichs' Temperance Brennan. She isn't like me at all, but I find her really entertaining to read.

I also like a lot of Lois Duncan's YA protagonists. They are always really interesting, strong characters.

Tess Gerritsen's Maura Isles and Jane Rizzoli are also favourites of mine.

As far as my own writing goes, I think Joy Morrison is probably my favourite, although I am loving the male and female protagonists I've created for my new book Storm Warning. I could write them forever - and hope to write an entire series until I feel I've wrapped up their relationship.

Joy is one of those characters that I love to write and read, but I don't know how well I'd actually like her in real life. I think she'd totally overwhelm me and likely intimidate me.

Meme - Day 16

Had to get a new router today, so I am late with this.

16. Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how “far” are you willing to go in your writing?

I do write them. I never used to, but the older I got the harder it is to keep romantic relationships out of stories.

I have written some fairly explicit stuff, just to see how I could carry it off. It was a challenge at first to write any kind of sexual relationship because I struggled with making it sound realistic and not over-the-top like some romance novels. I never read straight romance, most of the books I read the romance elements are a secondary plot line to the suspense or thriller plot line that carries the book. So I wanted what I wrote to fit that type of genre.

I took more risks in my fan fic with romantic relationships because I think I was aware a lot of the fandom liked these relationships. I tried to hide them as the secondary plot (usually to some kind of criminal activity) but the truth was they were the primary plot. It took awhile for me to admit I wrote romance in these cases.

Meme - Day 15

Half way through!

15. Midway question! Tell us about a writer you admire, whether professional or not!

Professional writers I admire ... I like a lot of Douglas Coupland's work, especially his early stuff. I find he writes about Vancouver so well. I want to be able to use where I live as part of future books I write. I have shied away from it for some reason.

I also admire S.E. Hinton in terms of how her books are read in schools. I think The Outsiders is read at such a great age for the first time, and I would love to be able to write a YA novel that would inspire the same cult following as her book has.

As far as non-published (so far ... ) I admire MB Miller, my writing friend who is preparing to query her first book. She is great with language - she always hits on the right word for the right thing and makes it pop. I also admire my other two friends who co-write so seamlessly it's impossible for me to tell where one begins and the other leaves off. It's really inspiring to see that kind of symbiosis in writing.

Meme - Day 14

Back on track again!

14. How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?

I love maps and floorplans in general. I have a big collection of maps and floor design books that just came from a general interest. If I thought of stories, I almost always found examples of what the houses the characters lived in looked like, what the floor plan was and how it was all organized. Sometimes I tried to match with what I already imagined, and sometimes I just found what I thought was a good match from going through house designs or something.

I have used Google Maps to save aerial maps with locations pinned on for stories that take place in particular cities. I did that with the Brookline prequels.

I don't think they enhance the story so much, but it's a fun way for me to research. I don't have any maps or floorplans sketched out that are online though, almost everything is hand drawn (which is weird because I can't draw) or it's clippings from newspapers or magazines.

I do the same thing with characters - I sometimes find a perfect physical fit in a magazine ad or on a TV show and try to find pictures to illustrate it. My novel Death Game I "casted" with pictures of actual actors to help me visualize them.

Meme - Day 10 through 13

So I got really busy and didn't have time to do these most of the week, so here are a few of the questions so I can catch up. I should be at Day 13.

10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in?

In my early writing there were a lot of interesting situations, because I kept the stories suitable for YA and younger readers, where the slightly unbelievable is almost expected. Since then, and since editing, I've cut down. I try and stick to things that are realistic. I am embarrassed at some of the dumb situations I put my characters in, because the majority of the novel would be realistic, then I'd thrown in this stuff that didn't work - armed robberies, fancy vacations out of nowhere, crazy kids doing crazy things at boarding school, things like that. It was hard to just let some of it be instead of pick at it and try and make it real. Part of the reason people read is to be taken into a situation different from their own, so I want to preserve some of the stuff I see as being outlandish.

11. Who is your favorite character to write? Least favorite?

My favourite to write is probably Joy Morrison from my Brookline University series. She is completely unlike me, which is probably why I enjoy writing her so much. I think I really got into writing her when I wrote the prequel novels, because I had a lot of fun showing how she came to be the way she was in the BU series. I had a lot more freedom for her to be out of control sometimes. She has problems ... but she also has a lot of drive and moxie, which I admire.

I also really like to write Tim, who is a character in my yet-to-be written novel and from La Muerta. Writing a male POV is usually difficult for me, but I really enjoy him. He is controlled, he is unemotional and trying to show his evolution into someone who allows himself to feel the full breadth of emotions in his life is really challenging.

I also liked writing Lupe, from La Muerta. It was my first time writing a character of another cultural background, so I found it difficult, but rewarding. She has a different take on things because of her background, and she challenges other characters, which I also like.

Least favourite ... sometimes I didn't like writing Libby Morrison, because for the longest time I felt like she had all of my boring qualities. When I first created Libby and Joy I imagined them in two ways Libby as me and Joy as how I wanted to be. I've since revised and changed a lot of that - Libby has the steady characteristics I've always wanted and Joy has some of the impulsive ones I wouldn't mind having. I had to give Libby some kind of edge over Joy - so I gave it to her in terms of her stability and her abillity to move through challenges and not let them destroy her, whereas Joy gets through them, but she barrels through and sometimes needs more from people to do it. Since writing the prequels I like Libby more because I really tried to enhance her character, so I hope I can bring that to the BU series so she isn't a person on the sidelines that is boring for me to write.

12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding? Any side-notes on it you'd like to share?

I think fan fiction was where I did a good job. Most of my original writing didn't require a lot of world-building. My fan fic was historical, so there was a lot of research put into it. I actually enjoy writing recent historical stuff now - Brookline actually takes place in the early '90s. I found it more fun to set stories in different times after I got past my initial fear of it.

I have always wanted to write a novel with some kind of sci-fi or fantasy element so I could try world building. I am very organized, I love maps and floor plans and things like that, so I feel like I could have a lot of fun really creating a universe.

13. What's your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?

I haven't really written outside of my own cultural experience, except for La Muerta, where the main character is a Mexican girl. I was really reluctant to write her at first, but then decided I would write her however she came to me and worry about culture later. i found her voice was easy to capture, and I think it's in the details where I need to enhance the cultural aspect. There is a really fine line with stereotypes sometimes, and I want to make sure I don't turn her into one. I also feel like in the end, the story is not really about her cultural background, but about the experiences she went through and who she is as a person. I don't know if this is because of a reluctance to include the cultural aspect or because it honestly didn't influence her personality in the story, I don't know.

Taking the question a different way, I really loved writing about what I felt was an "American college experience" in Brookline. I think I've made it a little less NCAA-I than it was before for the sake of realism lol. But I loved creating a college campus and filling it with everything I would have wanted in an American college experience (my experience in Canada as a commuter student was much different). So that culture was fun for me - the sorority and fraternity culture was also a lot of fun to write.

Okay ... hopefully I'll be back on track posting this tomorrow!

Meme - Day 9

I find this next one a very strange question, and judging from the other writers I've seen fill out this meme, I'm not the only one.

9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.

This is such an odd question, because I can't really say that there is a particular process. I have had characters jump into my head fully formed, named and complete with a story, and I feel like I haven't had to lift a finger. I've also spent days pouring over baby name books looking for a name to jump out at me that will inspire a character.

I've also put together characteristics and then scoured for a name to match them. I've looked at my friends and family and made characters inspired by them (who always turn into their own creations at some point, a thing I have never quite felt I had anything to do with). Sometimes I watch a TV show or movie and see an actor and a character arises from it. Sometimes I read a book or watch a favourite show and think of a character inspired by what I'm seeing. It's just so varied and different, I can't say I get ideas from any real places in any specific way.

Maybe it's because so many of my characters seem real to me, that is seems somewhat absurb that I "get ideas" about who they are. I find the longer I write, the more they just show up. When I was younger it felt much more like I had to struggle to create someone, while now they just arrive and wait for me to use them somewhere. Once they're here, they feel real, and I feel I have about as much control over them as I do regular people.

Meme - Day 8

I can't believe I've kept up with this 8 days without forgetting. I am loving today's question.

8. What's your favorite genre to write? To read?

My first love was YA fiction, because it's what I read growing up. It's changed so much since then, and I haven't read a lot of recent YA, so I have no idea what the trends are in the genre anymore. I think a big part of why I stopped reading was the sense that "adults didn't read YA" - but now it seems so common to see adults reading YA books, so I want to get back in it.

Since then, I've really been turned onto suspense and suspense thriller genres. A lot of my favourite authors get filed under mystery at my local bookstore (like Kathy Reichs, Patricia Cornwell etc) but their writing isn't so much mystery to me as suspense and forensic suspense. I read a lot of Lisa Gardner, Tess Gerritsen as well. I prefer the suspense genre because I like the feeling of the chase and the danger the characters are in. A lot of the suspense books also have a romance aspect to them, I suspect because I tend to choose suspense novels written by women. I haven't read a lot of male-written suspense.

I used to write a lot of YA, but since getting involved in fan fiction, I find that my writing has taken a bend toward romance/crime. I don't know if I'd classify it as suspense at this point, but there's a lot of criminal activity framed within a romantic scene. I find it interesting because I've never really been interested in romances, and the only romance I read comes within the confines of a suspense or thriller novel.

Meme - Day 7

7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?

I can't listen to music while I write. I have a hard time writing if there is a lot of unfamiliar noise - TV, radio, lots of traffic etc. That is probably why most of my writing was done later in the night. I have kind of gotten past the traffic thing, but I still can't write with music on at all.

I do feel I'm influenced by music a lot when I write though. When I wrote In The System, a pre-Brookline novel, it was set in the 1980s, and to get myself in the right frame of mind, I listened to a lot of music I thought the main character would listen to. As I wrote the novel, I ended up creating a soundtrack for specific scenes in the book, just as if it were a movie. I found it helped me ground the novel in a specific time period. A lot of times there is a specific song that might speak to me.

My novel La Muerta always smacked of the song Heart of Gold by Neil Young. I can't really say the lyrics are why, but something about the sound of the music reminded me of the desert, which was a big part of the setting. The images of dust and hot sun and cracked earth always stayed with me when I wrote it, and the song brings a lot of that back for some reason.

I've also used song titles for novel titles. Some work, some don't. I'm a bad titler in general, so it's hard for me to find good ones.

In the Brookline prequels, Joy was all about the hair metal. I heard a lot of Skid Row, Bon Jovi, Guns n Roses etc when she was around. It helped to play it before or after I wrote, or before bed. The music always got me thinking about the story. When I wrote fan fiction, I'd listen to music from the era as well, it helped me feel connected to another time.

So I like the vibe music can bring, but I definitely can't have it on as I write - even instrumental stuff distracts me.

Meme - Day 6

I always get a lot of mileage out of questions like this.

6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol' pen and paper?

For years, I wrote on my bed. I'd sit cross-legged and type on a laptop. I got a lot done, but I also got immense back pain. I have chronic back pain, and it was not helping me to sit like that. So, for Christmas this year, I asked for an office chair. I'd gotten a laptop desk earlier that year, but couldn't use it without a chair. I finally had a good place to sit.

I then discovered it hurt like hell to sit in an office chair all day. I don't know if it's my posture or what, but I find if I sit in it for more than 4-5 hours, it causes me mid to upper back pain. My solution has been to sit in the office chair all morning, and move to the bed in the afternoon. Now my back is way better.

I find I get way more fiction done on the bed though - habit?

I used to think I was someone who could only write at night, after everyone had gone to bed, and it was quiet and cozy. I find that's not the reality. When I did Nano in 2002, I discovered I could write any time of day if I had to to get my word count in - I just preferred to write at night. I think I still do - the distractions of TV, traffic, phones ringing etc is gone at night.

I also prefer a computer. I still like to do plotting and planning by pen and paper though, and occasionally if I'm out I can write something on paper, but overall the computer is what is responsible for me writing so many novels. I type way faster than I write, and with better readability lol. I can almost keep up with my thoughts when I'm typing, but I can't at all when I write by hand. I don't know what I'd do without the computer.

Meme - Day 5

And we're on to Day 5. So far, I'm not inspired to write, but I am liking the chance to talk about my characters lol.


5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?

Well, I've had characters give birth, so I guess newborn is the youngest. As for oldest ... I suppose one of the grandparents in Sandy Cove would count. Sandy Cove was interesting in that I literally dismissed all the parents and authority figures, since I was so afraid to write adults and parents. Those of you who bought the series will notice the parents were involved in the later books, only because I became more adept at older POVs.

Most of my characters have tended to stay around my age or younger. I'm much more comfortable writing younger characters, although I've been working on older ones as of late.

In terms of creation, I think I mentioned in the last entry, Joy Morrison is the oldest character (at least of those I wrote books about). I recently read my very first diary. I started keeping one in 1985, and found an entry where I mentioned my friend and I were going to write a book and "the twins Samantha and Dawn Mitchell are the stars." I wish I had written down characters I came up with when I was really young. Joy is the only one that carried through from a young age into things I wrote when I was older - and I still write.

The most recent character I created is probably someone for fan fiction. I don't really keep track of things like when I create a character though.

Meme - Day 4

Day 4 of the writing meme I'm doing, in hopes it will inspire me.

4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!

I don't remember a lot of the stories I wrote as a kid. When I was in elementary school, I wrote a fan fiction (although I didn't know of that term until I got online in the late 1990s) about The A-Team. I also wrote a handful of short stories between grades 6-8. One revolved around a girl with a lot of siblings, while the other was about gymnasts. If anyone here has read Sandy Cove, those might sound familiar.

With my early characters I almost always based them on people I knew. One of the first that I didn't was Joy Morrison.

I have no idea where I got her name. Maybe it was due to a story my grandma told me about relatives that had girls named Faith, Hope and Charity (which are the names of Joy's older, deceased, sisters). I have record of Joy in my notebooks from 1988, when I was 12 years old. I cut out pictures of people I thought looked like her - one was Heather Graham - and she was the star of tons of story ideas. About a year later, Joy got a twin sister named Liberty. I had a huge fascination with twins and multiple births, and I gave Joy this identical sister. Joy and Libby went on to star in a lot of my story ideas. They were orphans, mostly because I had no concept of writing adults, and it was easy to have missing parents (not to mention instant angst lol). I actually found a way to weave them into A-Team fandom when I saw a season 5 episode that said the A-Team's CO in Vietnam had the last name Morrison.

I think I chose the last name because it was simple. I had a list of relatively common last names I tended to use quite often, and Morrison was one.

Meme - Day 3

3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?

I used to use baby name books for character names. I have a huge library full of all kinds of name books. I'd page through and make a list of names that might suit the character I was thinking of and would decided which suited them best.

For last names, I'd go to the phone book. Sometimes I'd write out a few pages of last names I liked and pick one from there. I never really focused on things like the meanings of names. I was purely about how it sounded and weather it suited my character.

As of the last few years, I find that new characters seem to jump into my head with names ready. I don't know if it's because I have so many names in my head from reading those baby name books all these years. Characters in general seem to appear to me more fully than they did - I don't feel that I have to create them from scratch that much.

As for places, I have usually used real places in my writing, so naming towns and locations is always done for me. I have had to name streets on occasion, which is pretty easy. In an upcoming novel, I will be setting parts of it in a fictional small suburb/small town outside a big city, and I have yet to come up with a name for it. I've named the local watering hole after a place I visited as a kid quite a bit. I've also named horses in various novels, which was kind of fun.

I feel lucky that I don't have to put days in coming up with the perfect names for everything anymore, although when I was younger I loved it - it probably helped that it prolonged me having to actually write, which was a scary prospect back then. Now I tend to let things unfurl as I go, which means I get to the writing much quicker.

Meme - Day 2

2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?

It would take way too much effort to go back and count how many characters appear in each novel I've written. Brookline alone probably has hundreds, as I have an encyclopediac binder full of names I can use if I need to refer to a professor, student, sorority or fraternity member etc. There are 40 members of the sorority in the first book and that grows each year, so that series has easily hundreds of characters (although only a handful that get "screen time").

I can say that the majority of my characters are female. When I was younger and created most of these characters and worlds, I was more familiar with female POVs, so I had a substantial lack of male characters. I had never written a male POV until I tried to for a short section of Brookline. I broke out of the "female only" bracket when I wrote fan fiction, and now I can say I feel comfortable writing either, although I prefer female POVs because the research is a bit easier lol.

Overall, I probably have created a few hundred characters. As for characters with meaningful page time and affect on plot, probably 5-10 per novel, so I'd guess 50-100 different meaningful characters.

Meme - Day 1

In an effort to get this blog going, I'm borrowing a writing meme from LJ user estarriel, also known as my friend Jessie. It's a 30 day meme, with a question for each day. Feel free to fill it out yourself - there are some really great questions.

01. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

I have interconnected a lot of my writing. Sandy Cove and Brookline University, my two biggest projects, occur in the same world and actually crossed over at one point. In reality, they probably shouldn't have, as each could have existed just fine without the other.

It's hard to choose a favourite though. Sandy Cove was set in the city I live in, so there was something really fun about using real places and locations in my writing. It was my first big writing project, and I created characters based on people I knew or photos that I'd come across that spoke to me, so there was a very personal element in the fiction. It's also the only universe where I've used the character of Jessy, who had been in my head for many years in many different forms.

I think Brookline was more work though, because it required that I build the universe of a college campus, a Greek system and student body. That was a lot of fun for me. I think I enjoyed it so much because I was in college when I created it, and I set out to create sort of an ideal vision of an American college experience. Over the years of editing, I've turned it into a more realistic campus, but in the beginning I was all about making it my ideal place. I wanted to give readers a taste of my perfect college campus. After awhile it became too unrealistic to make it perfect, and the characters themselves were far from it, and the campus really turned into a real entity for me, complete with maps and pictures and floor plans. I love that part about creating universes.

In total I have used the Brookline U characters in seven books. If you count their appearance in Sandy Cove, it brings it to eight books. So I must have obviously enjoyed the characters in the Brookline universe quite a bit. They are probably the oldest surviving characters I created, and they were created at a time when I was able to think wildly about characters and not care about their realism. Because of that, there's an element of adventure in thinking about Joy and Libby for me. It brings back a lot of good memories from when I was young and thought about them all the time. I was fortunate in my twenties that I hit upon the perfect universe to place them in. I think the joy of finding a place for these characters I loved was a great feeling, and probably why I continued writing about them. They are the most real to me, and their universe pulls from a lot of my favourite things.