Character Stroganoff

Okay, I admit it.  I’m having a little trouble gaining traction with continuing the Halteres saga.  “What’s your friggin’ problem?”, you might say.  To which I say, “Shut up.” in the most politely defensive way possible.  (Yes, to those who’ve been following, ‘shut up’ is a term of endearment, like ‘cram it’, or ‘don’t bother me, I’m writing a book’.  I love you all and feel comfortable enough around you to be a complete asshole.)

Where was I?  Oh, yeah, the no traction gaining thingy.  You know the whole writer’s block is bullshit deal?  Well, I have to amend that.  It’s not that I don’t know what to write due to a lack of material.  Fortunately, I have the opposite problem.  I have too many ideas percolating and don’t know where to begin.  I can actually feel you rolling your sympathetic, tear-filled eyes.

Yes, poor me.  Anyway, I decided to start by considering my characters (hey, he’s actually tying it back to the title of the damn blog post for once).  I thought about which one I’d like to spend time with (all), and retrofitted my nebulous, purely conceptual writing plan to build stories around them.

I’m a stubborn sumbitch.  I was supposed to make a plan before writing.  I was supposed to outline a plot, character arcs, conflicts, resolutions and some other literary bullshit all before putting fingers to keyboard.  But hey, shut up.  I like doing things the easy way, which usually makes things harder in the end.

I got this far.  I went back to my previous works, Halteres and Opposable, and jotted down all my characters.  Then I went to my current project, Spire, and added those individuals to the list.  Being all three novels exist in the same realm, there’s a lot of crossover, but here’s what I ended up with-

Now all I need is a Badass (free) graphic artist to make a nifty wallpaper with all my character like those others.  Wait a minute, am I really comparing myself to Marvel, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and A Song of Fire and Ice?  Yes.  Yes I am.  In comparison, I’m not as good.  I’m different.  But personally, I’d take my shit over theirs any day of my life, and that’s the way it should be.

So with that, I’m gonna spend some time with my characters.  And who knows, maybe some day, so will the rest of the world.

Until next time, don’t bother me.  I’m stroganoff a book.