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29. How often do you think about writing? Ever come across something IRL that reminds you of your story/characters?

The short answers are “almost all the time” and “often”.

I’m always mulling over either the story I’m editing or the next one I’ll be writing.  Used to be these thoughts were much more concentrated on the currently editing and less on the next project but that seems to have flip-flopped on me lately.  Probably not a good thing as I already have a bad habit of starting more than I can finish.  My poor writing partner gets random emails from me pitching my next idea, but she’s a good sport and is always encouraging.  I have a little notebook too that I use for jotting down stray thoughts.  Some I use for flash fiction stories, others I see as novel material.

I love going to the movies early.  I get the best seats and while everyone else watches “The Twenty”, I’m mulling over ideas and not feeling guilty for neglecting anyone or being anti-social.  Best of both worlds.

Stumbling across sights or events in real life that remind me of my writing is something I’ve learned to keep to myself.  It happens but I no longer share it.  The epiphany of keeping it to myself came when I realized I’d just used a fictional situation from one of my novels to explain a human resources position to one of my employees.  She gave me an odd look and I realized I probably sounded like Ginger from Gilligan’s Island (click the link if you’ve no idea what I’m talking about).  Ginger had a habit of offering solutions to problems based on what her movie characters had done in similar situations.  And you just knew her fellow castaways probably found it cool for the first couple of days, then began to roll their eyes behind her back.  Except for Gilligan, of course.

So, I”ll leave you with a bit of advice.  Don’t be a Ginger.  Fact may be stranger than fiction but it carries more weight with non-writers.  Writers, on the other hand, will play along, God bless ’em.

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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!