Living the Dream

Welcome back to the A to Z challenge blog. Today, my Did You Know? features the letter C and probably the most critical aspect of any novel, character development.

Every author knows that character development means creating unique, believable, three-dimensional characters that the reader will bond with, care about, and invest a bit of themselves into throughout the story. Characters are expected to grow in some way, to achieve their goals, and of course, to entertain the reader from the onset to the very last page.

No author starts off absoltuely perfect in their field, writing a masterpiece from the first keystroke. Like everything else of value, we study those who have achieved greatness in the field and hope to learn from them. Here is part of an article on character development for Master Class.com, one of my online writing resources. In this article, the expert uses the famous Harry Potter character to prove his point. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-develop-fictional-characters

8 Tips for Character Development

When writing a work of fiction, from a thriller to a romance novel, prepare to spend a lot of time fleshing out the details of who the characters are, inside and out. Your goal is to create memorable characters by employing literary devices and writing techniques. Follow these development tips when you sit down to write:

1. 1. Establish a character’s motivations and goals. Think of Harry Potter’s quest to defeat Lord Voldemort, fueled by his parents’ murders. Great characters are driven by a deep-seated motivation and have a goal they are trying to reach. This creates interesting characters and also creates a story arc. The main character’s driving force should be one of the first story elements you figure out since the subsequent action will be driven by this motivation.
2. 2. Choose a voice. Who will be telling the story? First person point of view allows a character, usually the main character, to narrate the story using the pronouns “I” and “me.” Third person point of view is a voice that is outside of the action. The perspective of the narrator will determine how a character’s information is revealed over the course of the story. Learn more about point of view in our complete guide here.
3. 3. Do a slow reveal. Refrain from revealing too much the first time you introduce a character. Reveal information bit by bit as you tell the story—not unlike the way people get to know one another in real life.
4. 4. Create conflict. Conflict is a literary device that pits opposing forces against one another, most often involving the main character. There are different kinds of conflicts that will impact your character’s decisions. For example, if you have strong characters, test their resolve by putting them against something that reveals their weaknesses. A conflict can be external—create a bad guy to go up against a good character. A character can also have an internal struggle when they have to act against their morals or grapple with opposing beliefs. Conflict creates tension and is used to move a story forward by forcing characters to make decisions.
5. 5. Give important characters a backstory. We all have a backstory, and your fictional characters each need one, too. Dig into your characters’ lives and flesh out their histories. Even if most of it won’t make it onto the page, a character’s backstory will help you figure out what makes them tick and will inform their decisions in the story.
6. 6. Describe a character’s personality in familiar terms. To create believable characters, create a personality for your main and secondary characters based on characteristics of real people—that will help you create a multi-dimensional, round character with recognizable personality traits and quirks.
7. 7. Paint a physical picture of your characters. Describe your character’s physical appearance: hair color, eyes, stature. What are their mannerisms? What is their body language like? Describe them to help readers envision a more realistic image of your character.
8. 8. Develop secondary characters. Create different types of characters that contrast with one another. A sidekick (think Watson to Sherlock Holmes) or a foil (Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter books) can illuminate the main character’s traits, strengths, or flaws. If you create a static character—a flat character arc that does not evolve much—contrast them with a dynamic character, one who undergoes a metamorphosis throughout the story.

I try as much as I can to base my characters on real people that I know. I’ll often name a character in a book after a family member or close friend. Sometimes, I’ll choose a name because it interests me. For example, let’s look at Twyla, the main character in Same Time Next Year. Here’s the blurb:

A novel within a novel. For three short weeks, Twyla Lancaster was the fairy tale princess who’d found her prince, but just like that, reality ripped them apart. Now, fifty years later, she needs to know why the only man she ever loved broke his promises. As she writes her memoir and learns more about that summer, she realizes things were not what they seemed. Hormones raced, promises were made, but Twyla left Michael Morrison high and dry, and within weeks, married someone else.

Grieving the loss of his parents and her betrayal, he turned his back on love, focusing on his military career. Now, goaded by his sister, he agrees to attend a wedding and reunion, knowing Twyla will be there. It’s time to find out why she lied to him all those years ago.

The moment the star-crossed lovers see one another, love blooms between them, but when Michael discovers Twyla’s secret, he’s devastated. Is love enough to erase fifty years of pain and betrayal?

Creating Twyla allowed me to draw on some of my own past experiences, some of my husband’s, and incidents from the past, its treatment of women, the events of the time period, and of course, the wonderful music popular in 1967. Twyla is strong and determined. She has her doubts and fears–and of course her secrets. Michael is not perfect. He’s made mistakes, and it’s facing those mistakes that will eventually heal fifty years of pain and loneliness.

Check out the free preview to see what motivates Twyla to finally look for her answers.

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Come back tomorrow when I’ll give you a Did You Know? for the letter D. Enjoy your day.

Welcome back to Tuesday Tales, the weekly blog that gives you a peek into our works in progress. It’s hard to believe we’re in April and that Easter is less than a week away. It still seems as if we just celebrated Christmas!

This week, our word prompt is TOUGH and our scenes are limited to 400 words. I’m continuing with Finding Melinda, my newest Romance Suspense novel about a woman who discovers that the person she thought she was, isn’t the one she is. Enjoy.

I know the literature says it’s possible to have differences, but really? You aren’t even showing up on my tree as a distant relative, which is absolutely ridiculous. You’re my sister.”

“I know, and it bothers me, too. My crazy imagination is working double-time. I keep thinking I was switched at birth or something, but Mom would’ve known that. I mean, animals can tell their offspring from others, surely humans can, too. Since I’m not sleeping well, having nightmares where I’m running down the streets naked, screaming who am I? I took your advice and took the baby hair from that family album Mom made when she was into scrapbooking over to one of the private labs in the city, along with Dad’s ballcap and her favorite scarf. The technician was pretty sure they could extract enough DNA from them to help verify maternity and paternity. Once I establish that I am indeed a Crites, my brain can let go of what’s driving me crazy. The minute those results are in, I’ll frame them and hang them in my office. Then, the rest of this won’t bother me, and I can file it away as an anomaly.” She laughed. “Maybe I’ll even write a book about it.”

Mandy harrumphed. “You shouldn’t let this get to you. Of course, you’re part of the family and no stupid test is going to say otherwise. You’re my big sister, and I love you. So does Danny. He feels awful about all this.”

Melinda nodded even though she knew her sister couldn’t see her. “I know it’s been as tough on him as it has been on me. Danny called last night. He’s done nothing but apologize since we got back from the D R. As if this is his fault! It’s caused problems between him and Chloe, and that’s a shame. I really like her. The fact that her family’s results were all similar just made matters worse. Honestly, I’m okay with this. It’s probably just a case of atavism, you know, the throwback in the family. Maybe the original Crites did get to Ireland from the Basque region of France. The Basque were renowned fishermen. It’s not as if I was born with a tail and webbed feet. It’s not that big a deal.” But it was, and she was lying through her teeth.

That’s it. Stay safe, and don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.

Welcome to April 3, and Day 2 of the challenge blog since Sunday’s don’t count, although I did blog yesterday. Mother Nature is having a rough month, or maybe that’s me, and it’s only a few days old. Here in Canada, where we measure temperature in degrees Celcius, the temperature on Saturday afternoon was 16, then plunged to -7 at night. Today, it’s raining–April showers and all that– and it’s a pleasant 11 degrees, but we’ll see -1 tonight. Now, that may be good for the maple syrup industry, but it sucks for most of us.

My theme this year is Did You Know? And today the letter B is all about Bifurcation. When I was teaching, one of my favorite things was the word of the day, and I would encourage my students to bring in words no one would recognize and challenge them. not only to look it up, but to use it in a sentence.

Everyone knows the famous Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken. Here it is in case you’ve forgotten it.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

As a writer, I’m constantly hearing the importance of varying the vocabulary, and in an effort to do that, Iam a great fan of the thesaurus, bearing in mind that the thesaurus gives you synonyms that do not always mean the same thing, or have the same meaning, and that brings me back to Bifurcation, the process in which something splits in two. Bifurcation may sound fancy and la-de-dah, but all it means is splitting or cutting in two. If a stream divides into two smaller streams, that’s a bifurcation. In Robert Frost’s poem, that road bifurcated. Now, go back and reread the poem substituting bifurcated for diverged. Not quite the same, is it?

The point I’m trying to make here is that while fancy words have a place, that place isn’t always in the book you’re writing. It is essential to grow your vocabulary as an author, and there’s always a place to insert unusual words, but do so sparingly and only when that word will somehow add to the narrative.

Here’s an example of using such a word in prose. This is from my current work in progress, Finding Melinda.

He took the glass of ice from her, the slight touch of his fingers conjuring up images of those hands caressing her body. She shook herself, forcing her mind away from the erotic thought. She’d better watch her alcohol consumption; otherwise, she might say or do something supremely stupid.

Marc added the ice to the wine. “There you go, just the way you like it. Water and wine at its finest.”

She smiled, aware of the laughter in Danny’s eyes. By now, he’d no doubt realized what had her so discombobulated earlier. He’d always teased her back in the day when she’d been getting ready for one date or another. She might not have been the most popular girl in school, but she hadn’t been a wallflower either. She did have a few social and flirting skills even if she hadn’t used them a lot lately. Reaching down, she tugged on the skirt of her dress which had crawled up a few inches displaying more thigh than it should.

Grabbing her wine glass by the stem, she sipped and then turned to Marc, well aware of the fact that, while he tried not to make it obvious, he did seem to be watching her closely. She hoped that meant mutual interest, but every now and then, she saw concern quickly hidden.

“Darcy’s extolled the virtues of Sydney, and Trevor’s told me all about the glory of the Cabot Trail, but you haven’t added much. Do you have a favorite spot they haven’t mentioned?”

Before he could answer, Trevor did. “Does he ever. I hope you like history.”

Danny shook his head. “Like it? She loves the stuff. Did a double major in English and History at university. She cleaned out the library when it came to historical novels, and she didn’t confine herself to any particular country or time, although I do recall a fascination with Ancient Greece and mythology.”

That’s it for B. Come back tomorrow for a Did You Know? featuring C

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April 2! The sky is clear, the sun is shining, but it’s -7 Celsius (19 F), but thanks to the wind feels like -16 Celsius (3 F).

This week I want to highlight a scene from my romance, Wedding Bell Blues.

Romance, mermaids, cursed treasure, and more. MJ’s having a bad year. She’s canceled her wedding but refuses to give up the honeymoon. When she arrives on Paradise Island, she discovers her ex has changed the reservation.

Stranded, she has to rely on her first love, a man who sees her as his kid sister, for help. When Paul discovers the man behind her plight is the bully who made his own teen years hell, he gets MJ to agree to pretend to be his fiancée. Reluctantly, she agrees. Add in mermaids, treasure hunters, and Quimbois magic, and anything can happen—even falling in love.

MJ’s in for a wild ride! Read the free sample above. Have a great Sunday. Don’t forget to check back and follow my A to Z blogging this month.

Welcome to this year’s A to Z Blog Challenge. My theme this year is Did You Know? It’s a composite of things I’ve learned over the last ten years writing, researching, and editing. For each post I’ll publish, I’ll give the question and answer it, adding information on how I used it in my writing, and occasionally providing an excerpt from the book where it was used. I hope you’ll enjoy what essentially is a glimpse into my writing process.

This year, I’ve written two books in which I’ve used the same information but in a slightly different way. April first is for the letter A. Did You Know that Atavism occurs in humans as well as in plants and animals? In humans, atavism is often referred to as the throwback gene. When a man and a woman create a child, that child gets 50 percent of its DNA from each parent. But each child won’t necessarily get the same 50 percent from each parent. (More about this under the letter D.)

In biology, atavism is the modification of a biological structure. In humans, it refers to the reappearance of a trait that had been lost during evolution. Our genes do not determine who we are, but with atavism, they can sometimes serve as reminders of our evolutionary past. There are several common examples of atavism in humans which include: color blindness, extra nipples, extra fingers or toes, an elongated coccyx (“tail”), excess hair, third molars, sharpened eyeteeth, etc.

Scientists postulate that a person’s aggression may be described as atavistic because it supposedly goes back to the ancient days when humans had to fight to survive–think of cavemen battling their environment, barbarians fighting over food and land–come to think of it, we may not have evolved that much!

In “The Criminal Man”, first published in 1876, Lombroso postulated a theory to explain why some people committed crimes, while others didn’t. Essentially, Lombroso believed that some people were born with certain physical and psychological characteristics that made them prone to criminal behavior.

Nature versus nurture is nothing new and has been debated in both biology and society. It’s the argument about the competing factors which determine fate: genetics and environment. Even today, people are split on what has the greatest influence on a person’s life.

While I found the idea of a born criminal intriguing, I used the idea of physical traits and abilities’ aspect of atavism in my Paranormal Suspense/Psychic Romance novel Atonement as well as in my Romance Suspense Finding Melinda, both books to be released this spring.

In Atonement, my heroine Anca, has inherited abilities from long-lost ancestors. She’s more than a witch, and discovering what she can do, what her ancestor could do is both thrilling and frightening since the fate of those she loves hangs in the balance of her success or failure to recover certain artifacts and defeat a reincarnated god.

Although she was raised in an alleged haunted house by a Wiccan priestess, Anca Cole, a bartender with a degree in psychology, refuses to believe in magic, demons, ghosts, curses, or anything remotely supernatural. There’s a logical explanation for everything.
When her aunt has an accident, Anca rushes back to Salem, arriving home to realize that things aren’t what she expected. The family ghost exists and insists it’s time for Anca to accept and fulfill her destiny.
With help from Dr. Walt Tanner, the man who broke her heart, a couple of unusual cats, and an ancient parrot, Anca sets out to discover the truth about Cole Cottage and find the key to saving the future. This fight may have started more than three hundred and fifty years ago, but the war ends now.
Unless she and Walt can find what was lost, evil will prevail and destroy any chance they may have at a future together. Can their love overcome centuries of hatred, jealousy, envy, and greed, or will they be doomed to stay apart forever?

In Finding Melinda, the story revolves around a woman who’s always believed the fact that she doesn’t resemble her brother and sister who look like their mother is because she takes after ancestors on her father’s side. When she discovers she’s adopted, everything she knew about herself changes as she tries to identify who and what she is in light of this new information and find the family she never knew she had.

That’s it for today. Come back tomorrow for a Did You Know ? about B.

Find other posts here.

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Welcome to the last post for the month of March and the first in my new Contemporary Romance, Finding Melinda. Have you ever taken one of the DNA tests they advertise? I did a few years ago as part of the research I was doing for a book I was working on at the time. The results were surprising, not Earth-shattering in any way, but they did lead me to discover aspects of my past that I hadn’t known. Finding Melinda is a purely fictitious story about what could happen if the results were completely unexpected.

Pierce’s eyebrows rose as he stared at the world map with its highlighted areas.

“Are you sure those are your results?” He leaned in closer.

“It’s my account, and this is my number,” Melinda confirmed, her lips pursed, her brow furrowed. “Is it possible they made a mistake? Mixed up the samples at the source?”

Pierce shook his head. “Anything is possible, but it’s unlikely. That particular company has a 97 percent accuracy rate.”

“Come on,” Mandy said, pouting. “Don’t keep us hanging.”

Melinda swallowed. “Well, according to this, I’m 68 percent French, 20 percent Basque, 7 percent Iberian Peninsula, 1 percent Greek, and a couple of other ethnicities each at less than 1 percent. What I’m definitely not is Irish. It’s as if I’m from a completely different family tree. Hell, I don’t even belong in the same orchard as you guys.”

“That’s got to be wrong,” Danny said, frowning. “Mandy and I have Ireland, Great Britain, Scandinavia, and Western Europe, but none of what you have, and given we should have between 25 and 50 percent, they must’ve made a mistake. I’ll order another test when we get home, and you can try again. In the meantime, let’s put the bet on hold. The next drinks are on me. What’ll you have, ladies? Let’s not let this spoil our last day here.”

“Of course not,” Melinda said, her voice maybe a little too bright as she fought down her concern. “Mom did say I took after the Crites while you guys are Donners through and through. This is just a hiccough. Pierce, didn’t you say they were constantly updating results? You two have Western Europe. The last time I looked, that’s where France is.” She laughed. “Who’s to say the first Crites didn’t originate in France? Danny, I’ll have a Bahama Mama.”

Melinda stared at her results once more before shutting off her tablet, her fertile writer’s imagination coming up with one scenario after another before deciding on the most likely one. The hospital had made a mistake, and she and another child had been switched at birth. Hadn’t she always felt like the odd man out?

Her mother’s last words came back to her. You were my gift, our gift. A gift from whom? She looked out at the ocean, as silvery under the sun as the wrapping paper on the Christmas gift had been. If she wasn’t a Crites, who was she?

That’s it. Stay safe, and don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.

Welcome to this week’s Tuesday Tales, the blog that gives readers a peek at an author’s work in progress. This week’s post will be the last one from Atonement, my psychic romance/paranormal suspense novel. It’s been a long haul as those of you following the blog know, but it’s finished, and I’m happy with it. Follow my blog if you’d like to learn more about when the book will be available.

This week’s word is CHAOS, a fitting way to end this crazy roller-coaster ride. The scene is limited to 400 words.

Enjoy! Next week, I’ll be starting something new.

“I wasn’t expecting this.” Walt stopped in his tracks.

So lost in her thoughts was she that she slammed into his back.

“I can smell the sea,” he continued. “I can even feel a slight breeze, and hear the waves breaking in the distance, yet I’m looking at a solid wall.”

Anca frowned and looked around him. “It has to be an illusion.” She pushed against it, but the wall didn’t budge.

Walt examined the door. “Over here. There’s a depression like the one we saw just inside the tunnel.”

She stepped closer. “You’re right, but this time, the initials are at three o’clock, not at the top.”

She fished the fused coin out of her pocket, set it in the opening, so that what she considered the top of the coin now faced the letters. The wall vanished and the coin popped out of the depression and into her hand once more.

“Wow,” Walt said and whistled. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

Trunks, chests, barrels, boxes, and crates were stacked floor to ceiling inside the cavern. He walked over to the wooden chest closest to him and opened it, revealing silver coins in various sizes, all as shiny as the day they’d been minted. He picked one up. “It’s a Spanish seventeenth century silver dollar. There has to be hundreds of them in here, and who knows what else is in the other chests. This is worth a fortune. If this is what Ralph and the men were looking for … Losh could do a lot of damage with this wealth and whatever’s in all of those. It’ll take us a long time to go through all of this.” He indicated the chaos in the room. “If Hezekiah’s skin and the artifacts are in one or more of them, how will we ever find them?”

She smiled. “They aren’t. In fact, most of this stuff isn’t Hezekiah’s. It belonged to Fearless Red. We’ve found the treasure everyone, including the men staying in the cottage, have been trying to find for decades. I suppose that, since he was related to the Coles, it must be mine. I’m sure there are a lot of valuable items in that mess, stuff the museums would love, but Hezekiah’s skin isn’t one of them.”

That’s it. Stay safe, and don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.

With spring comes April and this year’s blogging challenge. Today is Theme Reveal Day!

It’s that time of year when I have to pick a theme for this year’s A to Z Blog Challenge. Lat year. I worked with literary devices, the year before that with cocktails. The theme this year will be Did You Know?

Each day, I will be blogging about something I’ve learned during my writing journey, something that helped me craft new stories with interesting and unusual plots. Hope to see you each day as I add to your trivial store of knowledge, with facts, figures, and a peek at how I used it in a book. The countdown has started!

Welcome to this week’s Tuesday Tales. March has certainly come in as a lamb for us here in Eastern Ontario. The temperature ids mild and the snow is going away, although there’s more in the forecast. To those of you with a dollop of Irish blood, I wish you a Happy St Patrick’s Day.

Atonement is heading toward its conclusion as Anca gets closer to fulfilling her destiny. This week, we have a picture prompt, and our word limit is 300. Here’s the picture I selected. Enjoy.

Walt held Pop’s hand as Snap and Crackle moved among the goats in the enclosure. Earlier, he and Anca had introduced themselves to Richard Olsen and Brigit, the Tanguy farm managers, and had been given a tour of the farmhouse. If Ishmael’s desk had ever been there, it wasn’t now, nor was it in any of the outbuildings they’d examined.

While Anca had scrutinized every room in each of the buildings they’d visited, the only thing that had caught her attention had been an older, handblown, peach-colored glass bowl with a red beeswax candle in its center. When she’d commented on it, Brigit had insisted she take it, claiming that it had been used the previous year on Samhain as part of a matchmaking game. Unfortunately, she hadn’t noticed anything enchanted that could be the exit from the tunnel. As it stood, they had to hope that whatever was under the last cobblestone would give them the clues they needed.

He turned to her, his heart filling with more love than he would’ve thought possible. The sheer joy on her face as she watched the children brought with it a longing for children of his own—her children. He frowned, but if last night’s fantasies were to be believed, that might never happen. His sleep had been interrupted with dreams, at first similar to their moment in the bar, but then she would don the fur and run into the water. In that moment, he knew she would never return, and it devastated him. How much of the selkie would stay in her once she tamed the storm and defeated Losh? Would she remember him and the life they could have here, or would the lure of the sea be too strong to fight?

That’s it. Stay safe, and don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.

Welcome to March! We’re only two weeks away from the first day of spring, although Old Man Winter is keeping a tight grip on things around here. This week, the authors of the Tuesday tales blog are posting scenes with the word prompt LUCK. We’re moving closer to the climax here in Atonement. I hope you’re enjoying my magical, mystical, suspenseful paranormal tale.

Walt finished his milkshake. “I agree, and you’re right.” He chuckled. “Didn’t you say a soul could come back as anything, even one of the birds you hate?”

“I suppose, but I think we controllers of magic do return in human form. I’m hoping to learn more about that later … if we have a later.”

He reached for her empty hand. “We will. We have to. Now, what else did you learn?”

She described discovering runes on the staircase and finding the box in the cradle.

“Here it is.” She set a carved rectangular box on the table between them. “Even Hester didn’t know it was there. I asked her if she knew what I needed to find, but she’s never seen the artifacts. Hezekiah told her about them and that they were hidden someplace safe, but not what they were. That’s why she’s sure he would’ve come back for her … and them … if he could have. Since he didn’t, and the artifacts remain hidden where he left them, none of the Coles since his death have been able to protect the planet from catastrophic storms and other weather-related disasters. I’ve been trying to get my head around the reason for that; I mean, there have been at least fifty Coles since Hester’s death, but none of them could’ve had the abilities I do.”

He scratched his chin. “It could be a case of atavism, what people call a throwback.”

“You mean like my toes?”

“It’s possible, but those aren’t as rare as you think. Essentially, Atavism occurs when genes for an older trait, preserved in DNA, reassert themselves, replacing a dominant gene that we’re familiar with, one that hasn’t been seen in many generations. For example, hens have the gene to grow teeth, but as a rule, they don’t, just like fish and snakes don’t have legs and feet, but every now and then, you see one that does. many of the freaks in Barnum’s circus tents were mild examples of it. Look at it this way. It’s the luck of the draw, and you won the grand prize. Would you have preferred being born with hair from head to toe?”

Considering the fact that he was precariously close to the truth, she laughed. “That doesn’t make me feel any better.” Huffing out a deep breath, she stared out at the water.

That’s it. Stay safe, and don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.