Cuteness, Crud, and Casts of Characters, by Kiki Clark

(And now, a word from our cuteness sponsor.)

My husband and I were returning from the veterinarian's the other day, and I was holding our cat kind of upright in my lap. She has to look out the window in the car, but she also needs to be held so she doesn't fall about the place. Anyway, as we turned the corner onto Iris, we passed a guy advertising Jazzy's Crab Shack. He was wearing a lobster suit and waving to the cars. I was in the perfect position to grab Tilly's little paw and wave back to him, which left him laughing.
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Okay. Cuteness over. I could blog about being sick. I have this stupid crud that lingers on and on. I am so freakin' tired of coughing and blowing my nose, I can't begin to...but you don't want to hear about that.
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I can always talk about writing, as my family and friends can vouch. Here's the news: I've started a mystery series. Alone among those talented Noodlers, I can't seem to write an alpha male, and alpha males are what sell romances. So after three books with beta males, I wrote a chick-lit book. It's getting some good feedback right now, but when it came time to write a second one, I just couldn't face the prospect of creating another flawed gal seeking to fix her life. I was tired of internal conflict. "To heck with that!" I said. (People who know me are laughing. They know I actually said a very profane, two-word phrase.) I wanted to write something funny, with a honkin' external plot. While I was at it, why not resurrect some of my favorite characters? Rummaging around in my bag of unpublished books, I felt little hands grab onto a couple of my fingers. It was Angus MacGregor, from my Scottish hedgehog farce, "Touch Not the Hog," and Suki Oota, the nympho repairer of androids from my very first book, "Bargain"! They were both secondary characters I looooooved. (Why are writers so enamored of their secondary characters? Because protagonists are usually avatars for the author, and relatively normal. When it comes to the supporting cast, we ladle on the flaws and humor.) I added two more characters and came up with four people who travel around the U.S., looking into oddities. I'd tell you what job they have that allows them to do this...but then I'd have to kill you. It's basically Scooby Doo for adults, without a dog. (The Noodlers tell me this phrase is a great tag line, although I'd been using it in an apologetic way. Shows what I know.) If I'm lucky, it'll sell, become hugely popular, then be turned into a TV show, making me a brazillian dollars.

These are the dreams that keep writers going.

posted by Esri Rose @ 11:12 AM