While I wait for Hunted to come back from the editor I’m outlining a new series, a fantasy series that I’m insanely excited about! BUT…. (there’s always a but, isn’t there?) it’s taking so freaking long! And it’s all my fault…
As a reader I LOVE character and relationship development. I love the slow burn of an attraction that slowly ignites and burns through ups and downs, disaster and sex, until the parties involved are so tangled up that love becomes inevitable, no matter how painful. I love it so much I can’t help but write it, and it requires I know my character really, really well.
When I first started the Feral Soul Trilogy I spent about 3 weeks getting to know my characters (and doing literally nothing else). I wrote down every scene they featured in that popped into my head. I wrote backstories and interactions that would never appear in the book, anything to satisfy my need to know them, to understand what made them tick, and to learn what they wanted to accomplish during the course of the trilogy. And now…
Now I’m doing it again.
I’ve finished a vague outline of the idea as it first came to me. I’ve marked the plotpoints I think will occur as the series progresses (many of these will change as the character argues and drags the story in a different direction) and I’m done with a fantasy-world outline. And though I’d like to go more in depth on all those things before doing anything else, the only thing I can think about is these characters. So for the next few weeks, in between editing Hunted (once I get it back from editor) I’ll be found nose deep in character creation. The one good thing that comes out of this (besides my characters being like real people to me, which I’m not convinced is a good thing), is that once the series is out I’ll have a lot of possible bonus scenes to put up. Not enough to justify the WEEKS I’ll spend creating them, but it’s something for my readers to hopefully enjoy. And once I’m done and have this new series written, I hope you all find the characters as alive and real as they inevitably become to me during the amazing, rewarding journey that is writing.