Quite a Character

It’s funny how attached we can get to a fictional character we’ll never meet in real life. I mean, it’s not as if Miss Marple or Sherlock Holmes is suddenly going to show up at my front door for dinner and a cup of tea. And yet it’s these very characters who keep us turning the pages of a book late into the night to find out what they’re up to.

As a writer, I find it interesting at how very real my own characters become to me. I’ve heard of an author wanting to stop their characters on the street (or at least their human twin) and having to remind themselves that fictional characters really don’t grocery shop down the road from them. And no, writers aren’t crazy, even though we do tend to live at least part time in another world. Characterization in a novel is what makes the words on the page come to life and breath. It adds flesh to what would otherwise be nothing more than a cardboard figure.

Take for example my heroine, Pricilla Crumb. I’ve known Pricilla for about five years now. She began running around in the recesses of my mind far before I received that first contract to write her story. So by the time I was ready to put pen to paper she was almost as real to me as my next door neighbor. Almost.

This month, Pricilla’s second mystery is being released, Baker’s Fatal Dozen, but I recently finished writing the third and last book in the series. And while it might again seem a bit crazy to you, I found myself sad to have to leave behind this cast of characters that I’d been getting to know for the past couple of years. Like Max who loves Pricilla despite her quirky ways, his daughter Trisha who’s just fallen for Pricilla son’s who happens to own this beautiful lodge in the Colorado mountains. . .

Okay. You get the picture.

So what about you? What characters have you read lately that you just can’t get out of your mind? What made these characters jump off the page so you cared about what was happening to them? As writers, those are the stories we long to write, and as readers those are the stories we love to read.

Blessings,

Lisa