Romance Weekly

 

My, oh my, but the weeks do fly by. Here it is Tuesday again and that means it's time for Romance Weekly. This week's questions come from my dear friend Kate Robbins. I've just finished reading her soon-to-be-released book, PROMISED TO THE HIGHLANDER, and loved every word of it. I'll be featuring Kate and her new book on my blog on June 11, so be sure to come back for that.

Here are my answers to this week's jackpot questions:

How much of yourself do you write into your characters? Or do you write characters completely opposite to you?

This is a tough one. Obviously, there are components of myself in my characters. Otherwise, I couldn't give them depth, and some of them have experiences drawn from my life in their back stories, but mainly I wouldn't say they're reflections of me. I go through a pretty involved process to create my characters, including assigning them an astrological sign that fits the personality I'm considering to fit the storyline. I also use the Enneagram to get at motivation and try to give them a back story that reinforces these things. Right now, for example, I'm creating the characters and story for The Knight of Pentacles, book three in my Knights of Avalon series. Each of the books is named after one of the knights of the tarot and emulates the qualities the card represents. Unlike the other three knight cards, the Knight of Pentacles is stationary. His horse is standing still, in other words. So, my hero is stuck. Pentacles are associated with the element of earth, so he needs to be an earth sign. I decided he's Taurus, which fits the story and sets up his conflicts. The heroine, I'm thinking, might be Virgo. At the start of the book, she's been dumped by her fiance the night before their wedding after a very long engagement. Because it's too late to get a refund on the honeymoon cottage she's rented, she decides to take the time alone to heal her broken heart. While there, she meets the knight who guards the adjacent glen where the portal into Avalon can be found.  I was once dumped by someone I was engaged to. The circumstances and reasons were different, but the feelings of heartache and loss were the same, so I will draw on those feelings to make her sympathetic and believable.

Has your writing helped you see events in your own life clearer?

Not yet, but there's still time! It has helped rekindle my interest in paganism and the tarot cards, so that's something.

Have you written a character with more of your personal characteristics than any other? What are they?

Now, there's a loaded question if ever I saw one! I'd have to say all of my heroines suffer from feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt and many of my characters share my view of the world. But not one more than another.

Thanks for stopping by. Next stop, the lovely and talented Jo Richardson's blog: http://jrrichardsonfics.wordpress.com/