Before I get started, I’d like to remind everyone that Carolyn Jewel is giving away a copy of My Wicked Enemy to a lucky commenter on her post. I mirror this blog in four different places and Carolyn has generously offered to give away a second copy–one on MySpace and one on Blogger, so if you haven’t commented yet, what are you waiting for? The drawing will take place June 10th.
Now on to my Sunday night post:
I spent most of Saturday on two things–making notes on the world I built in my short story, Blood Feud and looking for pictures of two sets of heroes and heroines.
The notes on Blood Feud were necessary because I have ideas for two more stories set in that same world, but I couldn’t remember all the details that I’d put in the short story. The thing that surprised me was how much I’d forgotten. Or maybe it shouldn’t surprise me since it was due on the same day that my book had to be turned in to Tor and I was really thundering on the pages. I ended up with four pages of notes.
On Friday, the characters in these two stories finally gave me their names, and that means it’s getting close to time to work on them.
Armed with notes and my characters names, I attempted to put together a short synopsis. Yeah, I know, but I can do short if I really have to. Sometimes. 
But I kept running into a problem. While I knew general information about the characters and kind of had a bead on their attitudes, I didn’t feel like I had a good grip on them and that tripped me up on the synopsis. That meant it was time to go hunting for character pictures.
Ah, yes, either one of my favorite things to do or one of my least favorite depending on how long it takes to find the right images. For one couple, I already had their pictures on my hard drive and they were actually together in the shots. Yea!
Immediately, I started getting information that I didn’t have before, especially about the heroine. That’s why I love having the pictures. I know when I’ve found the right one and it just unleashes a torrent of information.
Couple two, however, wasn’t going to prove this easy. I thought the hero would be easiest to locate because I had a good idea of his personality and I believed that I had a good idea of what he looked like. It was his heroine that I found first. She was a surprise. Younger-looking than I expected (keep in mind she’s supernatural so while she looks young, she isn’t) and…moodier. Very much at home in the night, which I knew, but the picture that best represented her really underscored this.
As difficult and time consuming as it had been to find her picture, her hero’s was even more difficult to locate. I thought I knew what he looked like. I was wrong. I didn’t figure it out until I kept circling back to two men–both who had longish blondish hair.
I thought he had dark hair. I thought it was worn conservatively short. I thought he looked older than about 23, even though I knew he was a paranormal dude, too. Once I finally was able to give up what I thought I knew and go with the guy that felt the most right, things clicked for me with him, too. Surfer dude. Who’d have thought? Obviously, not me.
And this took all day. Literally. Today, I worked on my WIP (Work In Progress) instead of either of these stories, but I don’t look at it as wasted time. Now, with these images clear in my head, I’ll have more to mull over and mulling is always productive.
