Hi, all! Hope you’re enjoying the first day of October. We’re hanging in here on our little homestead in the works. We’ve had a very sick cat the last few weeks, which has been especially hard to deal with as we had lost our 18-year-old Squiddles-girl back on September 10th, but we’re hopeful our little Stripey boy is finally on the mend. I was not unhappy to see the end of September, I have to admit.
As much as I hate to see summer (in general) go, I have to admit that I like fall. I enjoy all the seasons in different ways, winter the least, but fall brings on a kind of exciting renewal that always gives me a gazillion new ideas for storylines that I’ll never have time to pursue. Spring is new life and green and fresh, but fall is… how to put this? It’s a very earthy, very grounded kind of season to me.
Maybe it’s because of Halloween but this time of year feels very supernatural to me. It really does seem like the veil is thinner between what we can see and hear in our world, and something else. No idea what that something else is, but it’s just beyond reach right about now. Hey, I have a wild imagination. What can I say? Or maybe there really is something there. I like to think so, anyhow. I think it would be arrogant to assume we’re all there is, and infinitely sad as well.
Anyhow, I have some exciting things planned for the blog (for once) in upcoming weeks. I wanted to let you in on that and get some early feedback if you’re so inclined. A few months ago, I got to spend a little time in my new office working, and as is often the case with new spaces, the ideas flowed. One of the things that crossed my mind was the notion of how authors see their characters.
This idea came about as I was struggling with getting my head around creating a character I want to introduce in a new series (which may or may not be written as T. L. Haddix.) She’s not a good person necessarily, could best be described as an anti-hero, and she does bad things. Part of getting to be at ease with the notion of being her “voice” for the world was digging into my own mind to figure out where exactly my characters come from.
I still don’t have that answer. I doubt I ever will.
What I did come up with was a curiosity about how other writers see their characters and an idea for a blog post about such. I have a good number of friends who are writers in all different genres, and I queried them. If they wanted to participate in my blog post (which has become a blog series,) I sent them a list of questions. It was very, very interesting to read their responses, to see how similarly or dissimilarly we all thought about the creative process.
I received excellent responses from them, and as I said, it was a very interesting read from the writerly side of things. I hope you’ll think it’s as interesting from the reader’s side, as well, when the series starts posting in a few days. In no particular order, we’ll be hearing from Sean Sweeney, Victorine Lieske, G.M. Barlean, Michael Crane, Jeff Brackett, and yours truly. We’ll also being hearing from an unpublished author I’ll refer to as DK, as I’m not sure what name they’ll publish under when the time comes. The names of the authors who are published are linked so you can get a look at who they are and what they write in case you’re curious. I hope you will be.
If you have any questions you’d like to have me ask, feel free to post them in comments and I’ll see what I can do about getting them answered. Some of these ladies and gents have new releases coming up over the next few weeks, so we’ll try go get those featured in their individual interviews, too.
That’s it for now. I’ll close while I’m ahead and not rambling, as one of my favorite YouTube guys would say. I hope you’ll keep your eyes open for these posts, as I think they’re very interesting and a nice glimpse into how differently authors view the worlds they create.
Happy Reading!