Ladies are very much in the news right now, from the Womens’ Marches of the weekend to comparisons between various political figures and their roles. Today’s post focuses on some of the ladies of my novels. Continuing on my theme of developing a character, I have explained that from my early writing as an online roleplayer, I have needed to work from an image. The image might not be the final ‘look’ of a character, since I add other details not apparent from a picture. It remains that I have to start somewhere, and for me, a picture or pictures are my inspiration.

There was another factor. I came across this description of a well-known series by Christine Feehan recently:

A quick summary of the first in the series: The leader of the Carpathians is going to kill himself because one of only two female Carpathians has been murdered and he’s distraught over his failure as the leader. He’s in tremendous psychic pain, and his anguish reaches a woman across town who is also psychic. She reaches back to him mentally, and they begin to talk telepathically. She stops him from doing the deed, he flies through the night to find her and see what she looks like, etc. He is very surprised to find out she’s a human, and not one of his kind at all.

The next day he arranges to meet her, romance and a lot of humping ensue, and there begins the predictable sequence contained in every other Carpathian novel written by Feehan.

1. Males lose their ability to see color at about age 21 and will not regain it until they meet their mates. It’s like Jude Deveraux’s thing where “you marry the one who can tell the twins apart.” It happens in every novel and takes the thrill out of initial attraction. Got color? Got mate!
2. Sex scenes are intense and involve blood sucking, blood exchange, and always, always, always the caveat that “Carpathians have sex in a more savage fashion than humans and thus cannot have sex with humans because their super duper strength and giant manhoods will kill the poor humans.” Further, there is always one doggie-style from-behind sex scene. It’s like clockwork. Once the couple are a-humpin’ in earnest, Feehan will throw in a rather spicy doggy style scene. Over a fallen tree, in a cave. Doggy style. Count on it.
3. Carpathians mate for life, and are entirely bound to each other, such that if the Carpathian male “goes to ground” during the day and is asleep and psychically unreachable by the female human, the female human is completely distraught and will try to kill herself rather than go on without her mate. Very angst. Tres drama.
4. Carpathians bind their mates to them with this Christian-vows-sounding oath that they recite in their own language while Doing It, and that binds their mate to them in self destructive manner described above.
5. The human females that are in some way “eligible,” i.e. through existing psychic ability, some demonstrable higher power or sixth sense, can be turned into Carpathians with an exchange of blood at three separate times. The conversion process is full of high drama and much soul-twisting angst on the parts of both the hero and the heroine, with lots of barfing and sickness for the converter.
6. The other Carpathians all have individual signature powers, and many of them focus on healing with herbs, candles, and chanting and singing, and there’s some weird dance involved with casting and uncasting a spell.
7. Doggy. Style.

So there you have it. You don’t have to read them now, because every single book follows this formula.

Yes, I laughed. I haven’t actually read the series, although I have tried, but it did not ‘float my boat’. Perhaps I know why now. But it did make me think. I write paranormal romance. There are a lot of indie authors in this genre and there are some phenomenally successful series in this genre. Plus, there is the old saying that sex sells.

But as any self-respecting writer will tell you, they want their story to be different, rather than the same old stuff, even though as Ms Feehan has demonstrated, that same old stuff is what some readers want. I looked at it from a different perspective. Quite often fans of my favourite authors will put up pictures of their collections of that author. I was surprised to note that, whilst I might have a ‘full set’ of my own favourites, this was far from the case with others. The average seemed to be half a dozen of the twenty or so titles. So clearly, the reader is after a bit more than the ‘same old’, because I don’t believe that the ‘lack’ of books is just down to finances., although, given the prices now being charged (£9.99 for an e-book edition by my own favourite), finances might play more of a part in time to come.

I have already admitted that I needed a picture inspiration for my ladies, and also that there were key elements which were almost expected in the genre. The trick was how to give my ladies a twist which made them different.

So help me, I was not going to have wilting violets as my leading ladies, nor was I going to have male-hating harridans. Aaleahya, the mate of Gavril, was a light-worker in her own right when she met him. Alix, the mate of Bran, was a NY State Police Homicide Detective. Stefania, the mate of Fane, broke away from her Pack, surviving on her own for over fifty years. Merida, Owain’s mate, grew up ‘in the system’ after losing her parents in an RTA, but she went on to run her own business. Strong ladies all, and females who would work in partnership with their males.

My stories are about the balance in a relationship. So far, that balance has been a male-female pairing, but that is not necessarily the case. One of my favourite online stories at present is a story based on Viking legend, of the relationship between War, one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and his lover, a Viking, whose soul provides the ‘humanity’ to be seen in War’s eyes. It is a well written story, with the emphasis on story, rather than on sex. The characters are explored, the rationale for their actions dissected. Yes, there is sex, but it is not the focus. Yesterday’s episode was over the fact that the Viking went to the trouble of buying pizza for War, because he was concerned about him not eating properly. That is a relationship.

Back to my ladies and ensuring that they were not stereotypes. Another technique I have used is the ‘interview’ technique. A Google search will bring up numerous options, but this one is my favourite in terms of questions which make sense: How to Interview Your Book Character. Why this one? Simply, they offer four approaches:

• Twenty questions
• Basic information
• “Gloves Off” questions
• Freestyle interview

I have used the ‘gloves off’ approach when ‘interviewing’ Fane, and admit that they do give you a different way of looking at your character, not least because it is not the usual stuff like height, eye colour etc.

This is another option in terms of Character Questionnaires: Proust and Gotham Character Questionnaires

The point is that you have the chance to give your character a twist that, whilst you follow some of the ‘requirements’ of your genre, also gives your own work that all-important, unique twist.

How should this not be achieved? In a complete contrast to the excellent writing cited above in the tale of War and the Viking, I was involved in another project which I left for various reasons. One of them was the way that, if things became ‘boring’ for the lead author, there were what could only be termed random sex moments … graphic, random sex moments. I am not a prude. I can write a sex scene just as much as anyone, but when sex is thrown in at the expense of the story? Forget it. Any long-term fan of your work is likely to be put off, unless pornography is the very specific genre in which you are working.

I am not writing porn. I am writing a romance, yes, but it is not porn. I want to show ladies who can stand up for themselves, and who are not afraid to tell their mates what they think of their moments of idiocy. That’s where the character questionnaires and the interviews come into play.

To close, I would like to share the fun I am having at the moment. One of my fellow online authors was having a bad day at work. No problem, I told her, we can write a fight scene when you are home. We used two relatively underused characters. As their story progressed, we realised that the one thing that they had not done yet was had wild sex. Call that a paranormal romance? Yes, it still was a romance. It still features paranormal creatures, but not wild sex. Not yet, anyway. It will probably become a novel in its own right, but in the meantime, I am enjoying exploring a character who has more to him that the need to ‘do it doggy style’. I am enjoying being a writer. Knowing your characters well is likely to ensure that you, too, will enjoy writing.

Until next time.

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LINKS TO THE BOOKS IN THE DIARIES OF THE CWN ANNWN

“Bound”, Volume 1 of The Diaries of the Cŵn Annwn
Amazon.com $0.99: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B016TQFBNY
Amazon.co.uk £0.99: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B016TQFBNY
Smashwords.com £0.00 (Free): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/589130