All My Children

Adults don’t count. Vampires are certainly excluded. Even the children in my stories must be considered characters rather than offspring, being born to the aforementioned fictitious adults. But I guess, in a funny way, every one I write is my child.

On second thought, maybe not. I did not birth Lucius or Julian or Black or Cassie or any of the other grown ups—mortal or otherwise—who populate my work. They came to me as individuals with stories to be told. I happen to be the scribe. The biographer. Some authors roll their eyes at others like me, who insist that their protagonists appear like ghosts, fully-formed and possessed of a unique personality, looking for a mouthpiece to speak for them. What, do those authors build their heroes from spare parts and assign traits from a personalities app?

Zzzzzzzz.

I have never constructed a character. Perhaps it’s a matter of deconstructing, of working backward from the final result to learn how he/she became who he/she was when I met him/her. Take Lucius, for example. When I met him, he was a battle-scarred warrior of legendary reputation. His “bad dude” potential was right up front and I know some folks who were either scared of him, disliked him, or both. Now, a dozen years and six volumes later, I understand how he became the scary bad hero of Treason. I’ve worked with him for long enough to have learned what makes him tick, and not because he’s confessed to any of it. I’ve learned about him through the eyes of those who knew him as a child, then as a boy, then as a young man. Did I invent those people, each with a story to complement his? I suppose, on some level, it’s possible.

But it’s much more fun to imagine that I simply make myself available and the voice finds me.