Cover of The Jigsaw Woman

Wow, is it day four already?  It feels like it’s been…about four days, actually.  Today’s topic is (in case you couldn’t figure it out from the post title):

4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!

The exclamation point at the end of question number four is exactly how the question was written and not of my own theatrical embellishment.  I’m not quite sure why today’s topic gets such fanfare but whatever, let’s get on with it.

First story…I’ll go one better and tell you about my first poem.  I wrote it when I was eight or nine and it went like this…ready?  It’s really deep. Continue reading →

Onward to day three!  Today’s question is:

3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you’re writing about fictional places)?

I haven’t had many fictional locales other than a few business and street names, so we can dispense with the parenthetical part of the question and stick with character names.

I don’t spend much time on character names, to be honest.  Sometimes they come as random snatches from a cloud of possibilities, like a lottery ping pong ball.  I do a lot of Flash Fiction Challenges, but because I only have 90 minutes to write my stories, I don’t allow names to suck up more than a few seconds of those precious minutes.  My current WIP, My Fair Vampire, started off as a flash fiction story and I’ve never for a minute considered changing the heroine’s name, though one of her love interest’s last name did change when I made him Native American. Continue reading →