Vampire Week continues with Nancy Haddock!
Why a Gidget with Fangs?
Nancy Haddock
In e-mailing the lovely, talented and moderately caffeinated Lucienne Diver about gracing a certain writer’s conference with her wonderfulness, she kindly invited me to be a part of her Vampire Week. Er, week plus. Let me tell you, I’m seriously honored to be in this company!
Did you catch all the terrific posts on Lucienne’s Vampire Week? See Rachel Caine’s hilarious Handy-Dandy Vampire Generator? Read Gail Carriger’s take on The Sillier Side of Vampires?
If you answered NO to any of the above, you might want to take a peek. Go on, I’ll wait.
Done? Okay, so the question posed as the title of this ditty now might change from Why a Gidget with Fangs to Why Not a Gidget with Fangs?
The main character of my series from Berkley, Cesca (rhymes with Fresca), was conceived in 2004 when I misheard a line in a peanut butter commercial. That’s right a peanut butter commercial. When writers say inspiration can come from anywhere at anytime, we mean it!
With peanut-flavored inspiration, one might project that La Vida Vampire would not be your dark, edgy, angst-filled tale. One would be right. Oh, sure Cesca has a background that’s not entirely Florida orange blossoms. For starters, she didn’t volunteer to be a vampire. But how was I to make Cesca different from the wide assortment of vampire characters I’d read and loved?
I knew Cesca had been born and raised in St. Augustine - the oldest continuously inhabited city in the US, aka the Oldest City and the Ancient City. The rub is that, except for a handful of clubs, bars and restaurants - and the 24/7 Wal-Mart - St. Augustine rolls up the sidewalks pretty darned early. Since Cesca flatly refused to work in a bar or club, she needed a different job.
After some thinking, the job solution hit me like a big DUH bomb. St. Augustine is a tourist town with a number of ghost tour companies. Cesca would give ghost tours. It’s a fun job, one that would put my people-loving vampire in contact with the public, and one that tied right into the character’s past. (Yes, Cesca did laugh at me for being so slow on the uptake.)
But wait! In the next phases of creating Cesca’s present and future, she informed me that she’s a part day-walker. This ability is what landed her in trouble with the vampire king who turned her. Since she’s up from mid-afternoon to mid-morning, she insisted that I let her learn to surf. She was, after all, athletic and something of a tomboy in her former life. No stretch for her to ride a bicycle - or a surfboard - in her new afterlife.
And thus Gidget with Fangs, with her natural shark repellent trait, came to be my character and friend in fiction, and more characters poured into her life. Maggie, Deke Saber, the Jag Queens, even the bridge club ladies. And in the new book, Last Vampire Standing, Jo-Jo the Jester, stand-up comic wannabe, enters stage left to compound Cesca’s afterlife.
So, at the root of things, what’s different about the process of creating a paranormal character from creating any fictional character? Other than defining the paranormal aspects, supernatural powers, and the world building, absolutely nothing.
Every character needs goals, motivations, and conflicts to carry a story. We give our fictional friends a past, family, mentors, allies, enemies, quirks, strengths and weaknesses in which to play out their stories. We give them wants, needs, yearnings, hopes, fears and dreams. We give them favorite music and foods, environments and pets, co-workers and neighbors. We give characters a life - or an afterlife - then pitch them into situations that challenge them to grow.
In short, whether we’re talking vampires, witches, werewolves, or human Joe and Jane next door, the writer’s job is always to suspend disbelief by giving readers characters they can relate to, root for, and hopefully care about enough to carry them into our next books, especially if we’re writing a series!
Do I love my Gidget with Fangs? Cowabunga, you bet I do! I also love the characters created by all the authors I read - be those characters normal or paranormal - and I’m always on the lookout for more new authors to love. The only thing that makes me cranky is not having enough books on my TBR pile. Fortunately, that’s not usually a problem!
Nancy Haddock
In e-mailing the lovely, talented and moderately caffeinated Lucienne Diver about gracing a certain writer’s conference with her wonderfulness, she kindly invited me to be a part of her Vampire Week. Er, week plus. Let me tell you, I’m seriously honored to be in this company!
Did you catch all the terrific posts on Lucienne’s Vampire Week? See Rachel Caine’s hilarious Handy-Dandy Vampire Generator? Read Gail Carriger’s take on The Sillier Side of Vampires?
If you answered NO to any of the above, you might want to take a peek. Go on, I’ll wait.
Done? Okay, so the question posed as the title of this ditty now might change from Why a Gidget with Fangs to Why Not a Gidget with Fangs?
The main character of my series from Berkley, Cesca (rhymes with Fresca), was conceived in 2004 when I misheard a line in a peanut butter commercial. That’s right a peanut butter commercial. When writers say inspiration can come from anywhere at anytime, we mean it!
With peanut-flavored inspiration, one might project that La Vida Vampire would not be your dark, edgy, angst-filled tale. One would be right. Oh, sure Cesca has a background that’s not entirely Florida orange blossoms. For starters, she didn’t volunteer to be a vampire. But how was I to make Cesca different from the wide assortment of vampire characters I’d read and loved?
I knew Cesca had been born and raised in St. Augustine - the oldest continuously inhabited city in the US, aka the Oldest City and the Ancient City. The rub is that, except for a handful of clubs, bars and restaurants - and the 24/7 Wal-Mart - St. Augustine rolls up the sidewalks pretty darned early. Since Cesca flatly refused to work in a bar or club, she needed a different job.
After some thinking, the job solution hit me like a big DUH bomb. St. Augustine is a tourist town with a number of ghost tour companies. Cesca would give ghost tours. It’s a fun job, one that would put my people-loving vampire in contact with the public, and one that tied right into the character’s past. (Yes, Cesca did laugh at me for being so slow on the uptake.)
But wait! In the next phases of creating Cesca’s present and future, she informed me that she’s a part day-walker. This ability is what landed her in trouble with the vampire king who turned her. Since she’s up from mid-afternoon to mid-morning, she insisted that I let her learn to surf. She was, after all, athletic and something of a tomboy in her former life. No stretch for her to ride a bicycle - or a surfboard - in her new afterlife.
And thus Gidget with Fangs, with her natural shark repellent trait, came to be my character and friend in fiction, and more characters poured into her life. Maggie, Deke Saber, the Jag Queens, even the bridge club ladies. And in the new book, Last Vampire Standing, Jo-Jo the Jester, stand-up comic wannabe, enters stage left to compound Cesca’s afterlife.
So, at the root of things, what’s different about the process of creating a paranormal character from creating any fictional character? Other than defining the paranormal aspects, supernatural powers, and the world building, absolutely nothing.
Every character needs goals, motivations, and conflicts to carry a story. We give our fictional friends a past, family, mentors, allies, enemies, quirks, strengths and weaknesses in which to play out their stories. We give them wants, needs, yearnings, hopes, fears and dreams. We give them favorite music and foods, environments and pets, co-workers and neighbors. We give characters a life - or an afterlife - then pitch them into situations that challenge them to grow.
In short, whether we’re talking vampires, witches, werewolves, or human Joe and Jane next door, the writer’s job is always to suspend disbelief by giving readers characters they can relate to, root for, and hopefully care about enough to carry them into our next books, especially if we’re writing a series!
Do I love my Gidget with Fangs? Cowabunga, you bet I do! I also love the characters created by all the authors I read - be those characters normal or paranormal - and I’m always on the lookout for more new authors to love. The only thing that makes me cranky is not having enough books on my TBR pile. Fortunately, that’s not usually a problem!