Welcome Wednesday – Car Talk
Welcome to this week’s edition of Welcome Wednesdays!
Our topic this morning is cars (or transportation more broadly, for authors who write historicals, fantasy, science fiction, etc).
So, authors, in the comments, tell us about the car car that your hero/heroine (or other important character) drives. Is it a car you used to own? A dream car you want to own someday? Does their car make a statement about the character? Or maybe an ironic contrast (a Miss Marple-type detective driving a Porsche, etc)? Or for those fo you who write in dirrerent eras or worlds, tell us about your hero’s genre-appropriate means of transport and what it says about them.
Give us the details, and the reasons behind the choice. And be sure to leave a link so we can read more for ourselves!
I’ll begin…
The whole plot of FINDERS KEEPERS revolves around our heroine, Jane, driving her professor’s brand new Land Rover halfway across Europe. Her professor is based on a real person whom I met when I was a volunteer on his Earthwatch project, and his car was, you guessed it, a Land Rover. So it was only natural to work that into the book.
And now it’s your turn!
(when you’re done here, please stop by Exquisite Quills, where there are daily memes just like this one and plenty of fantastic authors you can discover!)
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10 Replies to “Welcome Wednesday – Car Talk”
Ah, modes of transport… where to begin???????
I guess with my own! My first car, which I still own and have written into my stories, is a 1966 Mustang named Sadey. I used to sit in the driver’s seat for hours at a time, “telling” her my ideas; it was a great way to formulate a story without actually telling anyone about it. I can safely say that I would never have finished if it wasn’t for that car. I have over 50 story concepts written down on my computer, and can safely say that a good 75% of those contain a unique car or plane of significance to the protagonist. The other 25% are westerns, and have horse characters!
In the interest of keeping this comment to a minimum (so hard!!!!!) I will focus only on the 3 main characters from my story, Forever the Horizon. It is an adventure-romance novel about treasure, Robin Hood, and chasing one’s dreams… even if it means going crim in order to do it.
Characters of Forever the Horizon and their choice of wheels…..
Gregg Nicholas, protagonist: Due to my own obsession with the detective series Simon and Simon, a young Gregg could be found roaring around his hometown in a souped-up Dodge Macho Powerwagon. Back then he was a carefree cowboy, singing in bars and competing in rodeos to pay for flight school. Gregg is an adventurer at heart, and there is nothing quite so adventurous as throwing an old bag in the back of a truck and taking off for parts unknown. And yes. I would love to find the Powerwagon they used in Simon and Simon!
Ian Lowell, villain… or not… either way, hot: I have given Sadey to this character because he is the real driving force behind the book. He is not the protagonist; getting inside his head over the course of every page would undermine his character. But he is the reason this book exists, and why it has developed. The same can be said for Sadey. Vintage cars are all about class. They require more love and attention than the standard, throw-it-in-drive-and-go vehicles that populate roadways today, and that underlying sense of care is a big part of Ian’s persona. He is a bit of a rascal, but a true gentleman at heart; while he is decidedly on the wrong side of the legal fence, he has a high attention to detail, and is courteous. The car was meant to represent this side of him.
On a side note, Gregg and Ian both are ex-Navy, and spent time flying the F-14 Tomcat. Top Gun, baby…! But that is a story for another time.
Amantha Goldstein, heroine: With Amantha, I was again able to tap into the enthusiasm I have for all things aviation. She flies a Supermarine Spitfire named Penny Copper (in reality there are only about 60 Spitfires still flying). The variant she has is a 1944 Mk IX, complete with a shotgun start and 10 bullet holes from a dogfighting encounter in WWII. Amantha is a classy, old-school type girl, and is the kind to appreciate the extra effort required to keep a plane of this nature airworthy.
My characters tend to be avid horsepeople, and lean toward classic modes of motorized transport. The cars and planes they interact with reach back into another time, when life was a little simpler and things were built to last. Anyway, I will pull the plug on this post now… otherwise I will literally be here all night talking cars and planes!!
For Jenno Bryce, there’s only one worthwhile kind of transport…
http://www.peterstjohn.net/index_35.htm
I drove my new special edition Pontiac GTO on many trips to Fenway to watch my beloved Red Sox!
Thank you for letting me share,
Keith
http://amzn.com/1503101797
thegurns2005@yahoo.com
“Beloved Red Sox?” I’m not sure I can have you comment here anymore 🙂
London in the 1980s. One character in A Beautiful Family drove a Bentley, complete with chauffeur . Yup, he was a pretty wealthy guy but a nice, grandfatherly, solid character. In the next book in the series, When Time Fails, we discover he has been knighted – a well deserved honour. I have never driven in a Bentley, but I live in hope. Ditto the Porche driven by a character in When Time Fails. His mother, a salt-of-the-earth, “boervrou” (Afrikaans/South African farmer’s wife) refers to it as “that absurd Porche thing” because on a previous visit to the farm from the city, he’d “almost wiped out the sump on a pothole” on the way. After that experience, he drove down to the farm in his Landrover, much to his mother’s relief. His mother, on the other hand, drives an old Mazda or Toyota sedan; or a microbus when transporting the farm workers to and from the nearby village. I hoped the choice of vehicles would quickly give the reader greater insight into the characters: the son – wealthy and a bit of a playboy; the mother, sensible, down-to-earth, practical.
The opening scene of Hiding In Plain Sight describes the heroines car, it’s a functional economy car which suites her personality–even the color matches most of her wardrobe. The hero drives a pick up truck which the heroine describes in detail the first time she rides in it–clean, not new, functional and masculine.
Vehicles are much more than a mode of transportation, they can reveal a lot about a character’s personality if you pay attention. :0
Ooh, this is fun!
Jett (my main character in Diving Into Him, South of Forever Book 1) grew up in NYC, so she doesn’t have a car. When she was in a super popular band, her label provided all the transportation. Now that she’s back on the bottom, she has to rely on her bandmate and ex-boyfriend Koty, who can afford a rental.
Savannah (my main character in Savannah’s Song, South of Forever Book 2) was gifted a BMW by her parents for her high school graduation, but she sold it so that she and Max could afford the move to Boston. They take turns using Max’s beater to get everywhere.
Mine rides a bike! 😉
They Mostly Come Out At Night takes place in a remote forest, so my characters do a lot of walking 🙂 (however, at least one of the characters travels across half the kingdom in the stomach of a giant monster beaver – points for originality?)
In book one of my Thirsty Hearts series, Charming You, my main character’s car brings the hero in her life. Micky is in the parking garage with a dead battery and places to go when Nick gives her Toyota Camry — and her pulse — a jumpstart. It’s a far cry from my work in progress. She drives a zippy, electric blue BMW coupe.