Broken Characters

Some characters a like a train wreck.

Yup.

No, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It's true.

The only thing more amazing than watching a train wreck, is seeing if the train can be put back together after the fact, and if it will survive.

Today my blog tour continues, and you get to meet a couple reassembled wrecks.

Christine Rains presents Excerpt #4 in the Mystery Sentence Game: Unravel the mystery of the Moonless night! Gather all 8 hidden words from the excerpts and figure out the sentence to win a free copy of Moonless. Send your mystery sentence to crystal (AT) crystal-collier.com with the subject MYSTERY SENTENCE before December 10, 2013, and you will be entered to win one of 10 copies of MOONLESS—just in time for Christmas. Happy hunting!

Kiren agrees to sit down with Mary Waibel, although he may not be especially forthcoming. Go meet this tortured soul!

Bethany Kaczamarek holds an exclusive interview with Miles. Who is Miles, you ask? (See the above reference to train wrecks?)

Who is your favorite broken character? 

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Crazy Uncle Henry: Getting to Know Your Characters

The debate goes on: which came first, the characters or the story? This of course depends on what kind of writer you are. Do you come across a stellar story idea and plot until Agatha Christie would be jealous, or do you meet someone (in reality, in a dream, etc) and suddenly realize, they have one heck of a story to tell?

I lean to the latter, or a combination, but have done both. Regardless of the method, one thing is obvious early on: there is no story without heartrending, bizarre, loveable, or otherwise stellar characters. In that vein I’m getting to know one of mine—one who is taking me by surprise, and I'd like to bring you along for the journey. Meet Crazy Uncle Henry.

Me: Say Hello Henry.

Henry: (stares squinty-eyed at me)

Me: I hear you are as diabolical as you are talented.

Henry: Who sent you here?

Me: (clearing throat) Says here you live in Lakeland, Florida, on an island, in the middle of a lake. How may I ask, did you come to own this particular piece of property? And why would you wish to live so far from civilization?

Henry: You don’t have any chocolate chip cookies, do you? The milk chocolate kind?

Me: No, Henry.

Henry: Oh good. Proceed then.

Me: You don’t like cookies?

Henry: Nasty things. Did you know on New Years Eve in 1984, the Toll House Inn—original birth place of the chocolate chip cookie, burned down? Mischievous things. And Massachusetts had the audacity to name the chocolate chip cookie its state cookie! Disaster, heart attacks, and coconuts thefts. All because of that *3$^ cookie!

Me: Interesting.

Henry: But I suppose they are no worse than the lizards.

Me: The lizards?

Henry: Well yes. That’s why I went into hiding. They never leave the coconuts alone!

Me: Wow. So, tell me, do you have any family?

Henry: (giving me a suspicious frown) Why?

Me: Because people have family…usually.

Henry: Posh. Electric charge, now that’s something everyone has. Static, I believe you call it. Build up enough of that and you could permanently damage your optic nerves. Quite unsafe I tell you, all this “static”.

Me: I’ll have to keep that in mind. I hear you made your fortune at a very young age. Would you like to tell us about that?

Henry: I am a scientist, madam. My work is for my-eyes-only.

Me: Sorry for prying.

Henry: Rightly so.

Me: Is there anything you would like to tell our readers, Henry?

Henry: Never wear rubber shoes.

Me: Okay. Thank you. That concludes our…one and a half minutes. Now um, security?