I’m a bit different from some authors. Instead of outlining and building a character from scratch, I let one fall into my head. I follow him or her around as we find the story together. So sometimes (oh, who am I kidding; it happens nearly all the time) I get to work with characters who are a little broken, a little damaged, or who don’t always make the choices I want them to.

This means I often hear the same comment from my early readers: I wanted to SLAP her!

If it’s any consolation to them, sometimes I want to slap her, too.

Yet to write a book any other way, for me, would feel wrong. It would feel like I’m forcing a character to do something contrary to his or her nature. Readers can sense this. It can make the characters’ journeys feel fake, like the author is moving them around on a chessboard to suit the needs of the plot.

When Sarah Cohen popped into my head for Sliding Past Vertical, oh boy, did I want to slap her. Probably more than any of my other heroines. She meant well. Underneath, I could sense that she meant well, and didn’t want to hurt anyone, but some of her decisions had unintended consequences because she wasn’t thinking them through. I really felt for Emerson, who still loved her after she broke up with him in college. Stop hurting my book boyfriend, I wanted to yell at her.

But I had to let her do what she was going to do. That’s one of the most important lessons I learned from her. As I write a book (and for a while afterward), the characters feel as real to me as the people I come across in the supermarket, on the train, in the gym. That’s what some readers say they love about them. Yet real people don’t always make the best choices, especially if they are in trying situations. They make the ones that feel like the best thing to do at the time. And knowing this has not only helped me feel more compassionate toward other people, it’s helped me feel more compassion for my characters and for myself.

I haven’t always made the “right” decisions in my personal life. Who has? Through writing, and especially when I’m given the gift of a character like Sarah, it helps me grow and helps me learn more about forgiveness.

In a novel, though, if a character never learns anything or changes in some way because of what she experiences, well, what’s the point of having her in the book? It’s a question writers often ask themselves while a story is in development. Sarah, as much as I wanted to sit her down and talk some sense into her, deserved to stay because she had to go through a transformation. She had a lot to learn. I had to be compassionate enough to let her do that on her own, without pushing her around or making her be someone that she wasn’t. And maybe that’s why she came into my life.

White Chalk, is a very personal story for me.  While it’s not autobiographical and I am not Chelle, I could have been.  So could you.  So could the kid sitting on the bus next to you on your way to work tomorrow morning.  The thing is, we never know what someone’s like is like behind the walls of their mind.  It takes very little to change the trajectory of a life.  A teacher who takes a special interest in a troubled child can save them, point them in a new direction, or take advantage and shatter their understanding of love.

Rachel Thompson, Award-Winning Author of Broken Pieces

Tyler combines shades of ‘Lolita’ and ‘Catcher in the Rye’ in a completely new way, drawing you in with poignant characterizations. ‘White Chalk’ goes deep into teenage angst with understanding and clarity. Savor, share, and use this poignant book as a primer on the brutal effects of abuse, neglect, and self-esteem.

Buy it now

Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Kobo ~

Top 5 Dark Heroes

 

When I wrote Flirting with Chaos, I wanted a dark hero. He needed to be broken and tortured, good more than bad, but definitely bad too. I needed to give the reader this hopeless hero and see if I could convince the reader that he was deserving of the heroine’s love.

 

Creating this guy takes balls. Big ones. I’m sad to say that at the beginning of writing the novel, I didn’t have huge testicles. They were just little tiny ones that barely hung low at all and. . .ok that’s weird. . .anyway. . .

 

I read lots of books with dark heroes in an attempt to research ones that were successful in the literary world. Here’s my top dark heroes that helped me develop Jude.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mr. Rochester 

brooding and mysterious. . .rich yet utterly poor in happiness!

 

 

 

 

 

Jericho Barrons

The asshole we love to hate! 

Oh God! Yummy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Travis Maddox

Boxing bad boy that doesn’t 

know how to love, but is willing to learn. . .

after messing up a whole lot.

 

 

 

 

 

Gideon Cross

HOT!

Did I say Hot?

What is his bad quality?

. . . he may be a dick.

But he’s a hot one!! 

Sometimes that counts.

 

 

 

Caleb

Okay. 

So yes, he’s a human trafficker of young girls.

Yikes!

But if you had to get kidnapped. . .

I’m just saying.

If you had to get kidnapped, I guess it wouldn’t be bad if it was Caleb.

Not buying it?

Fine. 

I do need help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Awesome Indies Discovery begins today and runs through December 14. Featured are eight simply awesome writers whose books have met high standards of quality and been approved for the Awesome Indies lists. I am pleased and proud to be in such distinguished company. Now here is my contribution to the tour. I’m also giving away the complete Waterspell trilogy. For details, see Discover Authors.

____________________________________

WATERSPELL
by
Deborah J. Lightfoot

Magic, mystery, murder, and romance …
The Waterspell Trilogy:
An intricate save-the-world fantasy adventure with complex characters, cosmic calamities, and the gothic sensibilities of Jane Eyre

~~~~~

I wrote much of Waterspell while living in the tropics in a house that was open to the breezes of soft summer nights. Often I worked late, gripped by a writer’s high, my fingers flying over the keyboard while the world slept. Vaguely I would catch the hoots of owls and the fragrances of night-blooming flowers wafting in on the breeze, but I wasn’t really occupying the same universe as the house that held me. On those magical nights, I was living with—and in—the characters of my medieval fantasy. I saw through their eyes, thought their thoughts, and felt their anguish. I didn’t merely sympathize with their pain: I felt it.

My writing became an out-of-body experience as my consciousness melded with my characters. Nothing existed in those moments except my pulse-pounding rush to capture not only their words and actions, but also their deepest secrets. I saw behind their masks. I knew things they’d never told anyone—hidden things they had not fully acknowledged even to themselves.

In the small hours of the night when exhaustion finally drove me from the keyboard, I sometimes found myself thinking, as I headed for bed, that I would like to read more of the story which had so riveted me. Then I would realize that I couldn’t read more of it until I had written it. The experience was like being split in two. The hours I spent out of my body, my mind at one with my characters, made for confused dreams as my essence struggled to leave the world of Waterspell and return to Earth.

When at last the writing was done and I could declare the trilogy finished, I cried a little to be parting from my characters. They were real to me. For the better part of 16 years they had lived in me, and I in them. We had spent a life together.

But now they were moving into a wider realm. The books were published, and readers began responding. I’ve been deeply gratified by the emotional connections that many readers have forged with these idiosyncratic characters of mine. Reviewers have called them complicated, original, mesmerizing.

Beyond Character: Going Deep

But as thrilling as it is to see my creations become real in readers’ imaginations, I’ve now found myself hoping for reviews that will give equal time to the story’s deeper themes.

One of those themes deals with the human need to belong. We all want to fit in; we want a place and a community to call our own. My protagonist, a teenage misfit named Carin, is homeless and rootless as the story begins. Her quest is to find the place where she belongs. Or more accurately, her challenge is to make a place for herself in a world where she does not really fit.

That’s one subtext of the story. Going still deeper, camouflaged amongst the underpinnings of the trilogy, is a commentary on environmental exploitation, ecological devastation, and Nature’s powers of regeneration, if we’ll only give Earth the chance to heal. That theme is nuanced enough that I wouldn’t expect most readers to pick up on it until late in Book 2. And even when this subtext is more fully explored in Book 3, it’s far subtler than the adventure, mystery, and romance of the trilogy’s surface layers.

Even so, I’m hoping to connect on those deeper levels with readers who enjoy a good fantasy adventure, but who also want more from a book than simple entertainment. Come for the characters, love or despair of them as you will, but please know there’s more happening in the depths of Waterspell. On the surface, the story may seem medieval. Down below, however, it’s as contemporary and relevant as the latest natural disaster or planetary catastrophe to strike our Mother Earth.

If you’re interested in environmental literary fiction or you like characters who’ll keep you up nights, I invite you to sample Waterspell Books 1, 2, and 3 at any online bookseller. The three books of the trilogy—The Warlock, The Wysard, and The Wisewoman—are the beginning, middle, and end of a continuous story, and best read as a set.

Review copies are available in all formats. Please contact me if you’d like to review.

Miranda Moon’s vivid imagination has a way of landing her in trouble. This time, she’s been suspended from school. So her straight-laced younger brother, Marcus, blames her when they’re relegated to their late grandparents’ old cabin over Halloween weekend. But when Miranda finds a curious trinket, they’re mysteriously whisked away to a place where magic flows through the trees and everyone already knows their family name. A place called Wunderwood.

Just as they arrive, a sinister warlock is freed from a long banishment. Thornton Crow resumes his deadly agenda to find The Tree of Mindala, the source of all the realm’s magic, and claim it for himself. As Miranda and Marcus discover branches of their own family tree that they hadn’t even known existed, they find out that Thornton has a score to settle with anyone in their bloodline. Especially them.

When Miranda learns of her own role in Thornton’s release, she knows it’s up to her to stop him from stealing not just magic, but also hope. With travel companions that could as easily be foes as friends, and only the cryptic words of a prophecy to guide her, Miranda must decide if she can carry out the task that will either save Wunderwood… or doom it forever.

Don’t Judge a Book By Its Magic

(Book 1 of The Convergence series)

By Kate Policani

Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal

The fabulous Awesome Indies have granted this book with the Seal of Approval. Since its last appearance on Discover Authors, my first Convergence series book has donned a new cover for ebooks and is Now available on Audiobook! 

Giveaway:

One comment on this post will win a code for a free audiobook at audible.com! Let me know what you think of the new cover and the audiobook reading.

The talented Heidi Baker has narrated the first book in The Convergence series. This tale features a lot of humor and loads of fun. As an added bonus, you can HEAR what all those crazy words sound like.

Hear a sample

Buy on Audible

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Itunes