Naïve: inexperienced, unaware, immature, adolescent, green, raw and youthful.

This is a word that is often used when describing me. Sometimes I cringe and sometimes I hold my head up in pride-depends on my mood. I personally think that my inherent naivety about things of the world adds realism to my adolescent and young adult characters. I don’t deny that I am not a “worldly” person. My kids often chide me about being rather old fashioned. What’s wrong with having the values and morals of a softer, gentler generation?

I can’t help but give my characters these qualities as well. In fact, I probably wouldn’t know how to make them more worldly. I am too often surprised at how evil people can be sometimes. When I hear through the different media sources of the horrible things people do to other people I sometimes actually cry. It is beyond my comprehension that humans can be so evil, and I DO MEAN evil! That is something that seems black and white to me-good versus Evil.

I suppose that my naivety can become a problem when developing convincing bad guys. I just don’t want them to be as ugly as they may well be in real life. I’ve read almost all of Lee Child’s books, which I finally had to give up reading because they were so gritty and frankly, R-rated. I love Mr. Child’s writing style and I am sure that what he writes actually happens out in the real world, but sometimes things that are hidden under rocks need to stay under rocks. There is a reason that the stuff under rocks wants to avoid the light, isn’t there? I prefer my character’s and stories to live and breathe in the light of day. I also prefer to read stories that don’t live in the shadows of Satan.

How about you guys? Any thoughts?

I suppose anyone who’s known me for more than a day knows I have a few psychological flaws, only one of which is my obsessive/compulsive tendency. It’s this part of me that drives me to write for hours at a time, ignoring everything else around me. I read the same way. It’s always been a problem for my family because I don’t like to eat, let alone cook (or clean – but I don’t think you have to be OCD to avoid that). So Roger has been on my case (he is the most excellent editor/agent type who almost always has my best interests at heart) about making sure I blog more regularly—but I’ve been writing madly. I thought that should take precedence.

 At any rate, the reason for my frenzied writing is I took so much flak from Brittany (who I swore I wasn’t going to listen to a week ago) that I call Teddi and asked her opinion as well. Teddi thought there might be some areas of weakness that I could fix by adding a new character and more background information. Though Teddi was much nicer about it. Brittany can be downright brutal—correct maybe, but I can’t imagine where she inherited her directness from!

 So I’ve been rewriting, adding stuff, deleting stuff for hours on end. To the point that my recently surgically repaired finger swelled up like a hot dog the other night. I’ve been changing and cutting scenes and adding people and new places. Honestly, if you are one of the people I sent the first version too, you’re going to be startled by the revisions. But it is coming together better. In some ways it’s like I’m writing a new book.

 A hint, there’s a new girl in town (figuratively speaking, because she actually lives in Montana). Her name is Tracy and she’s Amanda’s odd friend. Brittany insisted not even the most disabled of girls is not going to have at least one girlfriend from her past she still keeps in contact with. True that, so enter Tracy—right in chapter one. She’s as reserved as Amanda can be but for very different reasons. Tracy is also a critical reason that Amanda lives her life like she does. Even though she seldom sees Tracy, Tracy over the years has played a vital role in Amanda’s hesitancy around guys. It works well.

 This book has been a hard one to birth. The labor involved is much different than with the previous five novels – but I think in the end it will be worth it to all three of my paying public.

Sometimes I start out with one name for a character, but as that character develops, the name doesn’t seem to fit anymore. That is what has happened in Dead is a Temporary Thing. At first, I changed the name of the main character from Skyler to Finn, but then once he became Finn I didn’t like the name Amanda.

Now I want to change Amanda’s name to something like Emily or Rebecca. For some reason, these names sound more delicate and my character turned out to be more needy than I thought she was going to be when I started. Amanda sounds like the name of a girl you don’t mess with. She has it sort of pulled together and rolls with the punches easier. At first, you think my character is like that, but after you finish the book you realize she was just as disabled from the start as her male counterpart, but for different reasons.

Like I said, I like Emily or Rebecca, but I’m open to suggestions (include your reasoning).

Melissa

I’ve been working hard on the back-end of Dead is a Temporary Thing. I thought I was finished with the book until Brittany, my daughter, ripped it all apart. She didn’t think my characters were doing believable things. She also thought they were speeding through relationships at unusually high velocity. At first, I was annoyed. Generally speaking, Brittany has been my biggest fan. My first reaction was to tell her not to read any more if she was just going to slam it page-by-page. Then I tried to justify her comments by saying she just didn’t like the fact this book was written in first person. This is the first book I’ve done in a first person voice and it is harder because you don’t get anyone else’s viewpoint until they are speaking. You are locked into your character interpreting what other characters are doing and thinking – and we all know how poorly we humans are at doing that – ask any married couple.

But I went into rewrite mode anyway. It pains me to say this, but Brittany was correct. In order to fix some of the inconsistencies, I had to go back to chapter one and add more background and other nuances that better support what happens later. It wasn’t just a nice idea, it turned out to be critical for character development.

One of my favorite new lines in the book is: At this point, I couldn’t tell if Finn was the cure or the disease. In addition to the lyrics I wrote for my main male character to pen, I also added lyrics from popular song writers, like Avril and Rascal Flatts. I’m not done yet either. This book is now over 400 pages long – one of my largest books to date – but not quite up there with J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter) or Stephanie Meyers (Twilight).

Today I had more fun doing research than I thought was possible. I mean, really, doesn’t the word research just sound overwhelmingly boring? It unleashes images of dusty book shelves and intimidating stacks of navy blue and burgundy encyclopedias that have to be slogged through to find those few tidbits an author sometimes needs to make fictional characters believable.

I feel like I cheated the system.

In the novel I’m currently working on, Dead is a Temporary Thing, my hunky (not!) main male character is Irish. Now I am not Irish, well maybe back a few generations but certainly too far removed to claim any right to the heritage, so I needed help to give voice to my emotionally wounded Leprechaun. I contacted a few friends (thank you friends) who located an Irish family nearby I could interview.

I arranged to meet Bridgette at her home this morning. Imagine my delight and surprise to find a steamy romance novel splayed on her front couch. At first, I thought she was either trying to suck up to me or doing her homework by brushing up on romance novels, but no—she was actually in the middle of reading it. She likes them. Whoo-hoo!

I spent the next four hours reading and discussing my novel with her. Toward the end I was just reading it and she would comment on what my male character would, or would not, say in certain situations. Sometimes they were the tiniest word replacements, like this bites instead of this sucks, or isn’t that just marvelous instead of isn’t that just great and tablets instead of pills—such sweet subtle word exchanges that really flavored the character. She also helped me to make him less chatty (who me? make chatty characters? say it isn’t true.)

I think the best part was watching her reaction to the book. She was clearly getting into it. She hated that I kept asking her questions; she apparently wanted me to shut up and keep reading. So how cool was that for me as an author?

I’m just saying….

Melissa