28. Have you ever written a character with physical or mental disabilities? Describe them, and if there’s nothing major to speak of, tell us a few smaller ones.
I have not written a character with a physical or mental disability unless being a lousy vampire qualifies. If that’s the case, then I’d throw Dori in that category. Her “disability” is really more of a vampirism incompatibility issue but nevertheless, it earns her the contempt and impatience of her fellow vamps.
I enjoyed writing Dori as this woman who’d been dealt a pretty bad hand since the day she was born. Being turned into a vampire was yet another rock the universe hurled at her. However, her struggles to fit in and survive without compromising her principles made her, I hope, sympathetic rather than pathetic.
I’m not giving much away by stating that she prevails in the end by embracing her uniqueness rather than force-fitting herself into the expectations of others. I suspect this is how most disabled people not only cope but ultimately thrive.
I’ve not had any other characters with disabilities. All have had their limbs, wits and senses intact. I think it would be interesting to have a protagonist with a disability, especially in romance, because we don’t see it too often. And being plain is NOT a disability despite what Jane Eyre would have you believe. Tessa Dare shocked me with a deaf heroine in Three Nights with A Scoundrel. She didn’t let the reader in on this secret until well over a chapter into the book, if I recall correctly. I thought that was pretty cool. So my next novel (after NaNo) will be speculative fiction / sci-fi set in the post-apocalyptic, subterranean future, wherein my heroine is virtually blind when she leaves that world for a steampunkish world in the clouds. Ha! How ’bout that for a disability? Crazy, crazy!
Hahahahaha! I was just thinking … oh poor Dori is going to make this post. 🙂