When first asked to blog about growing a character in a series, I figured I should be able to write about this topic with little trouble. After all, I’d developed a couple characters for the BelleBooks’ Mossy Creek series and I’d outlined twelve books for Heather, my hypersensitive teenage heroine in my middle grade YA Ghost Handler series. But that was not the case.

With the best of intentions, I sat at my desk yesterday morning and stared at a computer screen filled with disjointed ideas that weren’t coalescing into anything I could even pretend to like. What could I say that was insightful? How exactly did I grow Heather? Why was I sitting inside on such a gorgeous spring day?

Fortunately, after consuming some chocolate courtesy of the Easter Bunny, I figured out why this topic was so daunting. Growing a character in a series is basically akin to raising a living, breathing child—only without the back talk and driver’s training.

Make Plans
 As with real children, your life/writing will be easier if you set some goals and create a plan to get your protagonist there. This plan can be a series outline or it can be a synopsis for each of the books you expect to write in the series. But you have to have some type of overall plan for something as big as a series. Your character/child must have an ultimate goal to reach for, and this goal has to be big enough for several books. My goal for Heather is to become confident in who she is, even if she is weirder than the average teenage girl longing for a hunky prom date. Her goal is to be less of a freak.

 One way to develop the big plan is to break down those ultimate character goals into smaller steps. I envisioned my series as twelve books total taking Heather from the summer before her freshman year of high school through the end of that first school year at Pecan Hills High. In Book One, Haint Misbehavin’,  Heather states her smaller goals of wanting the hot lifeguard at the pool to notice her, of becoming less of a bottom feeder, and of making some progress with her older sister, who finds Heather a big embarrassment.  By the end of Haint, Heather makes some progress toward achieving her goals, but there’s still room for further improvement. Book Two, Hainted Love picks up where book one leaves off. She’s hoping to build on her relationship with her older sister during their vacation at Jekyll Island and to discover her absence has made the cute lifeguard’s heart grow fonder. Of course, she encounters obstacles and a ghost who makes her goals more difficult to achieve. What Heather doesn’t know is that she’s becoming more confident in who she is with each obstacle she overcomes and each ghost she helps. As an author/parent, you have to see the big picture, even if your heroine/child doesn’t.

Keep It Real
Just as every child comes into this world with good as well as challenging personality traits, each teenage character created for a series must  possess both likeability and flaws to seem real. Perfection isn’t real, and it leaves no room for growth. You’ll know you’re keeping your protagonist real, if your character has the ability to make parents want to hug her and bang their heads against the wall when she makes the wrong decisions. Heather is that kind of character. She is basically a good kid, but like many other teenagers, she sometimes makes bad choices for what seem to her to be good reasons. 

Part of keeping your heroine real is determining all the little details of this child/character’s life. You decide where you want to raise this character. In what environment will she have the best chance to flourish—or achieve your goals as an author? In which school district will she live? Will she attend a public or private school? What’s her neighborhood like? How many siblings will she have? Who are her friends? How much interaction with other extended family will take place? What have been the biggest challenges in her life? What chores does she have to do? Does she oversleep? The more you know about your protagonist, the more real she becomes. 

Listen to Your Gut
Sometimes as a parent, you sense when something is wrong with your child. The same can be said for an author and a series protagonist. Because we live with these characters for such a long time, our gut often tells us when something in the story or series outline isn’t working. We need to listen to that gut reaction. While working on Hainted Love, Book Two of the Ghost Handler series, I had this feeling that something wasn’t working between my heroine and her aunt, who also sees ghosts and is suspicious of Heather hiding a similar ability. My gut told me to move forward with that relationship—something I hadn’t planned on doing until much later in the series. Listening to my gut made the second book better than it would have been if I’d stuck strictly to my detailed outline. 

So that’s how you grow a character in a series. You make a plan for this kid. You realize she isn’t perfect, and that’s a good thing. And you listen to your gut instinct when it comes time for crucial decision-making. Sure, this character/child might give you a few gray hairs along the way, but she eventually grows into the heroine you envisioned when you set out to write the series. Best of all, characters, unlike real children, never ask you if they can borrow the car.  

Georgia author Maureen Hardegree is thankful that heroine Heather Tildy does not as yet have her learner’s permit. Readers can learn more about Heather in Hainted Love, Book Two of the Ghost Handler series and can visit Maureen’s website (www.maureenhardegree.com) and Facebook page for updates on signings and events.

Talk about the icing on the cake!

This week Gayle Trent’s MURDER TAKES THE CAKE mystery series relaunches with a new personality for traditional print copies (Pocket Books, New York) AND a revised ebook novel (available only from Bell Bridge Books.)

 Check it out here:  AMAZON.COM

How Many Are You Up Against?

 Murder Takes the Cake has been on a long and winding journey, and now it feels like here we are back at home. The book was originally turned down by New York publishers—I imagine they felt the Southern flavor wouldn’t set that well on the nation’s (or world’s) palate as a whole.

Then good things began to happen: my friend Deborah Smith e-mailed to ask if I knew any authors with some good Southern fiction to offer BelleBooks’ new imprint. I said “me” and sent her the manuscript. The book was accepted, and the editing and publishing process began.

Having dabbled in publishing, I knew the importance of author marketing. I also knew I needed to reach my niche markets—cozy mystery readers and cake decorators. It was in cold calling some of the latter that I spoke with a woman who said, “You need to talk with my friend Kerry Vincent!” As has been the serendipitous case with Murder Takes the Cake, one thing led to another, and Ms. Vincent invited me to come to Oklahoma for the Oklahoma State Sugar Art Show.

And that, dear ones, brings me (pretty much) to the title of this post.

During a visit with my in-laws prior to the sugar art show, my husband mentioned where I was going. Later my father-in-law and I were sitting on the front porch alone. Roy was a man of few words, so we weren’t talking much…just rocking, enjoying the breeze, and watching the humming birds flit back and forth from the trees to the feeders.

Suddenly, Roy blurted, “So, how many are you up against?”

It took me a second to get the gist of his question. He’d seen my decorated cakes—I’d made him a birthday cake just a few months prior. Trust me. I’m not ready for a Food Network Cake Challenge by any stretch of the imagination.

I laughed. “I’m just going to visit, Papaw Roy, not compete.”

Papaw Roy is gone now, and that is one of my fondest memories of him. He’d thought I was going to Oklahoma to compete in a cake decorating contest, and he was getting ready to give me a pep talk. It never entered his mind that I wasn’t that good.

“How many are you up against?” is such a loaded question, isn’t it? We’re all up against the competi

(Not Gayle Trent, although Gayle also has a charming smile and frequently bakes.)

tion, and the crowd appears to grow larger every day…especially in the seemingly-shrinking book market. The key is to find someone who believes in you. Deb and the rest of Bell Bridge believed in Murder Takes the Cake. After it became a hit on Kindle, it garnered the attention of New York, and we were able to negotiate a deal that benefits all of us.

So look around and find that person who believes in you. And if you don’t see anyone around you, look up. God has believed in you from the beginning.

(This is Gayle Trent.)

KILLER HURRICANE COMING: EYEWALL

Check out meteorologist Buzz Bernard’s presentation on his novel, EYEWALL. Coming this spring, just in time for hurricane season . . .

REVIEW COPIES AVAILABLE.

email

deborahsmith@bellebooks.com

“She rose from the ashes of her childhood to light a path for others.”

That tag line from Dolores Durando’s debut novel, BEYOND THE BOUGAINVILLEA (March 2011) echoes, in some small ways, the author’s own early 1900’s childhood on the plains of North Dakota.

Mrs. Durando didn’t live the cruel life to which Bougainvillea’s MARGE GARRITY was subjected as a girl—indeed, Mrs. Durando had a happy childhood being raised by her blacksmithing grandpa–but she does know whereof she speaks when describing the isolated and rough-hewn conditions of Dakotas life.

BEYOND THE BOUGAINVILLEA

She found her place in a turbulent era of deep passions, heartbreaking sacrifices, and grand dreams.

When scholarly, smart Mary Margaret is sixteen her father marries her off to a drunken neighbor in return for a tract of land. The year is 1929, and Mary Margaret’s childhood has already been hard as a farm girl on the desolate prairies of North Dakota. Abused and helpless, the new Mrs. “Marge” Garrity seems destined for a tragic fate.
But Marge is determined to make her life count, no matter what. Her escape from her brutal marriage takes her to California, where she struggles to survive the Great Depression and soon answers the lure of the state’s untamed northern half. There, embraced by the rough-and-ready people who built the great Ruckachucky Dam on the American River, she begins to find her true mission in life and the possibility for love and happiness with an Army Corp engineer of Cherokee Indian descent.

This vivid saga of one woman’s life in the early decades of a turbulent century is told from the heart of a true storyteller in the grand tradition of women’s sagas.

Look for BEYOND THE BOUGAINVILLEA at Amazon.com and elsewhere in trade paperback and ebook. PDF review copies now available. Email Editor Deb Smith at editor@bellebooks.com

(From Debra:  I’m so happy to welcome New York Times Bestselling author, Jill Barnett today.  She is a lovely, kind, genuine woman who is absolutely funny.  And she sometimes makes me cry, but isn’t that what the best writers are *supposed* to do?)

I was watching the Piers Morgan Oprah interview the other night and was struck by something she said when asked where she’d be if she weren’t Oprah. “I would have been a 4^th grade teacher,” she said. “Because I love sharing with people. I love the moments where people are understanding something in a new way, something they’ve never thought of before.”

That’s the whole Oprah show (with the exception of giving away cars, trips, and favorite things) in a nutshell—the sharing of experiences with each other, especially touching something kindred between women. I will forever remember the Eat, Pray, Love show, where so many of the audience had lived through Elizabeth Gilbert’s journey back to happiness. She touched something universal in each of those women by sharing her story.

I have never thought of myself as that kind of writer. But I did remember when I conceived BRIDGE TO HAPPINESS and March Cantrell’s story, that I wanted to write a woman’s journey–her honest experiences–and I told a close writer friend that I was going to write this book so the reader was right there with March, there to live her life, both beautiful and terrible, to stumble when she stumbles. I wanted the reader to feel joy when March feels joy, to feel her love and lose, to watch her get so terribly lost that she forgets who she is. And I wanted the reader to be by March’s side when she triumphs and finds herself again, to be there to experience her confidence and joy and surprise when she is able to find happiness again, and learn that love is not lost.

Setting the book in San Francisco was important to me, as was the Lake Tahoe setting. I have lived in both those places. I love them, and know them as well as I know anywhere I’ve called home. In my dedication I explain that her experiences are not mine. I made up every single scene; it’s fiction—that’s my job, to make things up. (I lie for a living.) So I am not Elizabeth Gilbert. I created the characters and their words, even the songs, but I placed them in real places I know so well I can still taste the air.

I am not Oprah, but I’ve shared a few photos I took of the places I used as inspiration for March’s home and life in San Francisco, a city I adore.    (Note from Debra:  click on the link to see Jill’s photos in a short slide show!)

In BRIDGE TO HAPPINESS, I have also shared an experience, a woman’s journey, and I share this because I hope that in reading her story, women will find something kindred, something shared, something possible. And maybe when they read the last page, they’ll find a little happiness.