Something of a pet subject of mine, as an armchair biker, is the frequent use of motorbikes to set the image of the male (generally) lead in a romance novel. In the main, and this may be because many books are set in the USA, the chosen bike is a Harley.

Whoa Nellie! Why Harleys? There are loads of bikes out there, as illustrated at the top of this post by the Triumph Tiger and the BMW R1200. Ah yes, but those are not Harleys, you know, Harley Davidson, the choice of bad boy bikers everywhere, the epitome of the free spirit.

So, my first question to anyone thinking of including a Harley Davidson as the bike of choice for their male lead is this. Have you ever ridden one, or even sat on one?

Why should that matter? Look at it this way. Would you use a straight-bladed screwdriver to remove a Phillips screw? No, you answer scornfully as it would be the wrong tool for the job. In the same way, the wrong bike can set the wrong scene.

Let’s look at some examples:

1. Ride out, at speed, around some winding roads in NY State
2. Ride out, from NY State to one of the closer Southern States
3. Ride out, through woodlands where some may be riding pillion
4. In town riding, where traffic may be an issue

Each of these is like the analogy of the screwdriver above. For each of them, a different riding technique is used. If the male MC is a keen rider, then he will be accustomed to a specific style of riding. Much in the same way that you wouldn’t take a Mini on an off-road track, it is conceivable that a different bike needs to be used.

In November 2016, I attended the MCN Live show in Birmingham. I was buying replacement gear for my son, which is another topic I shall address. However, I wanted to work out a specific type of bike for a specific scene in one of my books. The scene was Item 3 above: ride out through woodlands where some may be riding pillion.

In the actual scene, the pillion passenger is actually blind, a former comrade-in-arms of the bike’s rider. The ground is uneven and muddy. Going can be slippery as the scene took place in early Autumn/Fall. I had narrowed it down to two bikes, both Ducati Scramblers, but which one would I pick. After a discussion with the Marketing Manager of Ducati (female), a suggestion was made.

Some of the bikes I have seen suggested have completely inappropriate tyres. This one, she suggested had the right combination and could be ridden by two people.

My own favourite MC in my books actually has two preferred bikes and it depends what he plans to do. The first is his Ducati Diavel. Why? He lives in New York City and commutes occasionally out to his home in the Catskills. The road to the Catskills is relatively straight. It is an open-the-throttle-and-let-rip kind of road. So, there he used the Diavel. On the other hand, in a scene where he and a member of his Pack had to give the appearance of being something other than American, they chose to use European adventure touring bikes. Casimir rode a Triumph Tiger Explorer, and Vittorio rode a BMW R1200. The intention was comfort and a bike capable of carrying a decent amount of luggage. They wanted maneuverability. With the best will in the world, these are not features of the generally customised chopper-style Harley assigned to a male MC. Harleys are great on straight roads. That is what they are designed for. But nipping around winding roads? Perhaps only if there is no oncoming traffic.

Returning to an earlier point, have you ever sat on any of the bikes you choose to use? Why does this matter? I will illustrate the point with a photo of my son on the UK Police Bike Safe bike. My son is 6ft 2in tall, and he is not a small or skinny type. Put him in his bike gear and he is impressive to say the least. But, look at him in relation to the size of the bike. Take a good look. Does he fit or does it look like the bike is too big? If he was carrying a female behind him, would she be comfortable?

My final point is on bike safety gear. Yeah, yeah, I know that it is only us wussy Brits and Europeans who wear helmets and safety gear. Big, bad American bikers don’t bother with than nonsense. Really?

Take a look at the comparison between ‘killed’ and ‘incapacitating injury’. It would really squash your romance if your male MC ended up as a bloody smear on the road because he wasn’t wearing a protective jacket, or worse still ended up in a coma because he chose to forgo a helmet.

Serious bikers wear safety gear. It is that simple. It is not a fashion statement, although the Harley dealerships seem to think it is with some of their ranges. It is practicality and the need to stay alive in the face of idiot car-drivers.

In conclusion, what are my key suggestions if you are planning to use a motorbike with any of your characters:

1. Make sure it is fit for purpose
2. Make sure it is the right size for your rider
3. Make sure that you include description that demonstrates why you have chosen that bike
4. Don’t forget the damned safety gear.

Other than that? Happy riding. By the way, my son actually owned both the Honda NC700X and the Triumph Tiger.

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LINKS TO THE BOOKS IN THE DIARIES OF THE CWN ANNWN and HELLFIRE PACK SERIES

“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

Every writer has a different creative process. For some it starts with a character, or a picture or it starts with an idea, and the characters are created to fit an idea.

This is how it works for me, using my current work in progress as an example. As for why I decided to write this? Well, two questions made me think. The first was a simple question of which comes first: characters or plot? The second was which three movies, or songs, inspired your writing?

I have made no bones about my first foray into writing, in my adult life at least, was as a result of my love of the work of one author, Sherrilyn Kenyon. Ironically, the first of her books which I read was the 12th in her Dark Hunter series, and I bought it only as it was the only fantasy-type story in English in a foreign airport.

Serendipity played a major part in my writing, because if the original group in which I wrote my SK-based fan fiction had not imploded, I might not have decided to see if my own ideas would work. Characters played a major role in my own creative process. From the time I was in my teens, I had dreamt of a dark-haired male, with a huge smile who wanted me to tell stories. He was the starter. My love of legends was next. Legends are stories which I like to see as ways that our ancestors filled in some of the mysteries of their lives and deaths. Greek, Egyptian, Celtic … it didn’t matter to me. The more the merrier. But it begged the question of what if these creatures still walked among us?

Thus, my original series, the Diaries of the Cwn Annwn was born. But when I had taken those characters to a certain point, I wanted something different. My own long-standing favourite has always been the Egyptian legends. So, when it came to designing a new character, that was where I looked. I am fortunate in that I can visit the Egyptian gallery in the British Museum regularly, and there I found inspiration in a book on heiroglyphs in the translation for the words “Beloved of Sekhmet”. Merysekhmet was born.

But where should this character fit in my little universe? With my job association in the NHS, I wanted to give my Merysekhmet characters a medical/scientific background. I had the vague idea that I wanted to use my character to highlight some of the sterling work done in the NHS. No problem there. Then I met another gifted storyteller, who lives in Alabama. The idea that “Karma” had was that she had a hacker character, a former FBI agent who had been the victim of experimentation in a secret organisation, resulting in her having the ability to shift her features and mimic the look of others. I tied this with an earlier part of my series, where the main character had encountered the Nazi regime’s fascination with the paranormal. Her shadowy organisation become a bioengineering facility led by ‘Doc’, the son of a Nazi geneticist. He had been running experiments using his father’s notes. “Karma” was just one of his subjects.

Ramble on … But this gave us the way to introduce some new characters and also look at the whole concept of mutation. Yes, the X-men franchise have covered mutants and what they can do, but what starts the process? We took the idea of a ‘scientist’ working from information that paranormal creatures actually existed, and determined that he felt that they must have interacted with the human race. Interaction meant procreation, which meant that their genetic material was out there somewhere. Finding it was just a process of intense searching. Once it had been found, the subjects might be the source of further experimentation to see what might trigger a recessive gene to be triggered.

It didn’t matter if the subjects didn’t know of the secret within their DNA. An unusual ability in gymnastics, or in the swimming pool? An unusual turn of speed on the athletics track? An ability to see in the dark? Find these people and let the testing and experimentation begin.

But they are ‘free individuals’. Why would they agree, because you can bet anything they won’t be paid for this? That’s easy. Kill them off in their normal lives. If no one knows they still lived, then no one would come looking. And thus, begins their new life in hell, where they are an experimental subject and nothing more than that. What happens to the mind and the spirit with that level of abuse, particularly if everything is geared towards reducing you from a ‘thinking human being’ to an ‘animal’?

In our stories, the Cwn Annwn and their allies will destroy the bioengineering facility. Having seen the potential of such experimentation in Nazi Germany, my original main character, Gavril Negrescu, is firm on that. They know that there are ‘subjects’ being held, but these are individuals pushed to their limits, with the ‘bonus’ that they have more abilities. Thus we had the story to follow Merysekhmet.

Josh Abbott, a ‘deceased’ member of the USMC, whose genetic make-up included recessive characteristics from a Native American grandmother several generations before, when North America was being settled by the incoming Europeans. When the bioengineering facility is destroyed, he flees. He trusts no one. He is a male in mental and physical pain, having been pushed for the gratification of his captor’s experiments. But, buried in the pain is a Marine, a male raised on the stories of an adored Great Grandpa. Reading the Native American legends of the cougar, Toho, I knew I had my paranormal angle.

Returning to those two original questions: characters or plot? I had the rough plot with this one first, and then the character had to be built, because research must be done. At the very least, Josh is a Marine, so he needs to walk and talk like a Marine. That takes research.

Birth of a new story? Well, when the question is posed; about character or plot first, there always seems to be an element of one or the other. The point I wanted to make was that it is not set in stone. Sometimes one works more than the other. Merysekhmet was about the character first. Toho was the plot first. Don’t be tied down to a formula. Relax and go with the flow. Listen to your dreams and surprise yourself.

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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