The first three chapters of the WIP are all in the heroine's POV, so I feel comfortable that I have a handle on Ryne. She's edgy, tough, determined, and intense among other things. But I thought I had a fair idea of the hero too even though I'd only done a couple of paragraphs in his POV. (I wrote about half a page in chapter 4 while I was writing the proposal because I saw the scene and didn't want to come back to the story cold later. Turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. Let's hope I remember this and learn from it.)
Now, granted, a few paragraphs aren't enough to really know a character, but they talk to me. Seriously. I get stuff from them that happened before the book opens. After I finish a book, they show me things that happen much later, long after the close of the story. So I really did think I had a fair idea of what Deke was like. He's a smart ass--easygoing on the surface, intense below.
But I didn't have a good idea of just how terrible he really is until I began working with him. OMG, Ryne is going to kill him! He's pushing her buttons like crazy and loving the hell out of it. Actually, I was loving the hell out of it too. Writing this has been fun!
Every book is different because the heroes and heroines are different. Different personalities, different responses. And while I love each and every one of my characters, some books end up being more fun to work on than others. Through a Crimson Veil was an enormous amount of fun to write because Mika was so entertaining and I honestly had no idea what she was going to say next until about the time I was typing it. Right now, it's looking as if the WIP is going to be at least that much fun--maybe more. Deke is as outrageous as Mika was, but in a different way. Mika was more of a tease. Deke is, like a said, a smart ass.
The stainers were working on the wood in the new house yesterday. They had a crew of 3 or 4 guys at it. It's the first activity I've seen over there since before Christmas, although I know someone showed up since then and put another closet door up. :-)
And the website went down yesterday evening for a while. I was right in the middle of doing an update when it happened. I wasn't able to load the pages until this morning. I don't know how long it was down--I went to bed--but I checked out a few other sites I knew were hosted by the same company and about half were down, so I figured they knew about the problem so there was no need for me to report it. :-) Just when someone had asked about hosting and I was going to post that my place was great and had only had one outage in nearly 4 years (that I knew about). Timing, as they say, is everything.
Oh, I almost forgot! A friend of mine has a great quote in her signature line! It's too good not to share.
"The problem with writing is that there's not much money in it." ~Cheryl Tiegs upon being paid a $75,000 advance for a book.I did a search to check on this quote, and it's cited in a number of places. It just amazes me how out of touch some people get from the real world. I long for the day that I can say something like that without bursting into laughter.
