Working Notes – April 27

I’m still working hard on my next book, the paranormal romance, Branded Rose. I was sidetracked for a while by the launch of Fatal Wild Child.

The book is becoming epic, one of those huge scale, sprawling intricate universe things.  I confess I’m loving all the world building going on, too.  It’s coming together like Leggo, like it was meant to be.  And there’s all these weird coincidences popping up.

A lot of authors start off with pictures of models and actors as “seeds” for characters in their books, and I’m one of them. By the time I’ve finished building the character and writing them, in my mind they look quite a bit different from the seed I’ve started with, and they act nothing like the character that actor played (if I’m using an actor).  In my mind, my character has their very own voice, face and personality and they’re walking and talking, living and breathing.  The seed just germinates the whole process.

The seed I used to kick start the hero of the story, Asher, was Sean Bean.  In particular, I was using an older picture of him I dug up on the net.  That’s it, above.

As I’m working through the manuscript and this story is growing (I’ve had to stop and rebuild the story to incorporate the massive world building going on), another character is also taking up quite a bit of my attention.  Logan, Charlee’s brother, is swiftly turning into a major character.

Logan and Asher don’t like each other much at all.  Logan has a traditional protective big-brother attitude toward Charlee, inflamed by incidences in their past.  And Logan is a lot like Asher – a warrior, incredibly alpha, and damned good at his job.  If either of them gave an inch, they’d probably be lifelong friends, but giving an inch isn’t in their personalities.  Giving an inch implies weakness.

Here’s a snippet from the manuscript, of Logan and Asher facing off:

Logan hung his head, his shoulders rising and falling as he breathed heavily.   He was stressed beyond anything that Charlee had ever seen before.   He pushed his hands into his jeans pockets, and stretched his shoulders, like he was trying to rid himself of tension, then shook his head, staring at the ground.   “I don’t like this,”  he said softly.   “Not at all.”

He whirled back to face Asher on the table and suddenly, there was a pistol in his hand–a black ugly looking thing that he held with expert ease.

Charlee was too startled to do anything, even draw breath.   It happened too fast.

But Asher moved faster.   He must have known what Logan was about to do.   He sensed it or anticipated it somehow.

As soon as Logan began to turn, he leaned backward and reached over to the counter to where the sword hilt lay—where Logan had put it after studying it, next to the flour canister.   He picked it up.

Charlee watched the sword appear in Asher’s hand.   It wasn’t quite magical, like it shimmered into existence.   But it wasn’t exactly mechanical, like it slid out of the hilt, either.   It was a weird mixture of both.   But abruptly, the sword blade was there, attached to the hilt, just as she had seen it before, shining slick and polished in the overhead light.   The point of the long blade came to rest against the base of Logan’s throat.

“Not a good idea,”  Asher said softly.

Logan froze with his pistol still six inches out from its target—Asher.

When it came time to finding a character seed for Logan, I had to find a dark-haired “warrior” type character that had potential hero status.  (Logan could definitely have his own story.)  And this is where one of the creepy, weird coincidences happened.  I thought Russell Crowe would be a good character seed for Logan.  Protective, great at the warrior stuff, dark against Asher’s light.  So I went looking on the net for a picture of Russell Crowe I could use.  I found this one on the right.

I swear, these two were made to be best buds.  Look at the outfits!  But first they’ve got to get through a whole lot of alpha male pride garb…er…”issues”.  😉