Happy Halloween All! It’s all about the Were’s today…
Happy Halloween All! It’s all about the Weres today…
That be WERES in them thar hills! (And that’s a very good thing!)
I am ready and rarin’ to go with my gay werewolf story set in a fictitious town of Sparrow’s Hollow, West VA. It sort of came to me (as most of my stories do) as I signed up for the Nanowrimo event. Gay weres are not a new thing in the M/M (gay lit fic) genre. There are literally TONS of them out there. But I wanted to play with it a bit myself. I love being spooked. I love the thrill of not knowing but fearing it beyond all measure of what’s right around that next corner! EEEKS!
I am totally pantsing it…
What the hell is pantsing, you ask?
It means while I know the characters, the arc and the general setting, I don’t have a planned outline. I don’t have everything mapped out to the nth degree. I have a feel for what I am going to do and I am just gonna sit down and hammer it all out. One. Word. At. A. Time. I am literally and physically flying by the “seat of my pants…”
Pantsing it…
I think it’ll be scary writing it from that perspective alone.
Am feelin’ the love of the lycan sort today! HOWL y’all!
And I’ve got something that is really quite different in my world of weres… I wanted something new to write about if I was going to take it on. I think it’s rather exciting and could reset the genre if I can do it right. We’ll see. Don’t want to write too much about it until it starts tomorrow.
BUT, what I will say, is that while I am gonna be writing this I will be blogging about the experience too. I don’t know what I’ve bitten into, but it is gonna be epic in its own way, I can just tell. And weres are all about the biting, and the rutting, and the feeding, right?
So on this All Hallows Eve, I’ll just cross my fingers (after I’ve completed the werewolf makeup on the granddaughter for trick or treating) and plunge in at midnight tonight!
It’s gonna be EPIC!
Thar be wolves in them thar hills! (and that’s a VERY good thing!)
Running with Wolves…
Running with Wolves…
So the NaNoWritMo event is coming up. I have to admit this is the first time I’ve heard of it. I guess I had my head down on my own shit I was writing to think about any sort of writing event outside of my carefully crafted worlds.
Let’s see the line up, shall we?
- Angels of Mercy (Volumes 1-3) – This one isn’t a surprise that it’s first because Volume 1 is in the can and on its way for final smoothing edits from a highly qualified editor that I am over the moon happy to be working with. So yeah, the boys (and girls) of Mercy, California are first on the list but theirs isn’t a supernatural story (despite the mention of Angels in the title – that is a reference to the high school mascot – an Avenging Angel).
- Far Wars – Fear the Feigr – This is my fantasy story that has quite the sci-fi slant all over it. I am talking Fae. But not just any Fae of the Celtic sort, no we’re going further back than that – I am talking NORSE fae – their forebears, the Feigr. Only my Feigr are fierce. They are in your face, kick assed dangerous bad asses – and we humans had better just learn to give them a wide birth. This one is a dark tale with a big gay twist (in that for the Feigr, it’s not gay at all… what could I possibly mean by that?).
- The Cove Chronicles – My Lord of the Rings epic tale gone completely NATIVE (as in Americans). This one is bold. It begins in the small town of Hallet’s Cove, Long Island (which later became Astoria) in the early 1800’s but wends its way to the Gold Rush time in San Francisco. But the Chronicles don’t end there. They stretch all the way to our more modern times in present day Hallet’s Cove – relocated to an inlet bay in Northern California. The Natives are restless and there’s good reason for that. They’re only defending the world against total annihilation as we know it. Yeah, it’s another epic. I tend to think Cecil B. DeMille epic.
- HO’M,O – Yeah, you read that one right… I have a book called HO’M,O. They really are initials that just happen to spell that the book is one big euphoric gay werewolf romp fest. Okay it doesn’t imply wolves at all, but I am telling you that’s what it’s about.
This last entry is the one I want to discuss today. You see, I am starting this bad boy off with the NaNoWritMo event that challenges authors to write a novel in 30 days with a minimum of 50K words. Now for a guy like me who can hammer out close to 10K a sitting (I am NOT bullshitting in the slightest – just look at my blog entries – words and the speed in which they flow are NEVER a problem for me), 50K is gonna be a breeze. I am more worried that I’ll get into it by November 15 and go well shit, I am only half way through the story and I’ve just broken 150K words! What the fuck am I gonna do now, Blanche?
That’s the real worry I have with the NaNoWritMo event. I think I’ll get too far ahead of myself.
HO’M,O is a tale about a young man in his senior year in high school. He lives a quaint and generally quiet life in the fictitious town of Sparrow’s Hollow (Holler) in the southern part of West Virginia (I chose it because my hubby is from WVA and can give me the 411 on it since he grew up in that area around the time I am setting the book (the latter part of the 1950’s). So no cell phones, no social media, hell, there’s barely ANY media of any kind in this po’ dunk of a town! And there be wolves in dem thar hills!
The Celtic take on Lycanthropy
I wanted to play with the whole supernatural werewolf/shifter element in the m/m genre.
Now, to be clear, I still don’t fully ally myself with the m/m romance genre that so many of my author contemporaries write to. My books, from my perspective as they are created that way, are Gay Lit Fic across other sub-genres – in this case, supernatural. It has the gay element (which is why the whole Gay Lit thing is first). With my work, that is implied. It will generally always have a gay element to it. Why? Because there is a boat load of that other straight shit out there that they don’t need me reminding them of why they fall in love. Their romances do not intrigue me in the slightest. They are fully represented by the masses of authors who have to keep reminding that crowd of why they do what they do. Our side is still woefully under-represented. So yeah, totally on-board with the whole gay lit thing. It’s a given.
Anyway, I also wanted to do classic horror setup from the 1950’s. I am utterly fascinated with the 50’s in that it was an era of absolute dullness (nothing really went on). The social upheaval of the 60’s was still around the corner and down the road a piece. The frantic forties (what with the War occupying a great majority of it) are also of interest but in this case I wanted the horror classic feel of the 50’s in this book.
Straight from ‘American Werewolf in London,” right?
So yeah, wolves. In West Virginia, no less. It just sort of popped up in my head. I’ve never been to WVA. I have no knowledge of the area first hand BUT I do have it second hand (as I said my hubby was born in Wheeling, WVA). So yeah, I got that part covered AND from the same era as the book (hubby is a tad older than me).
I am working like hell to get the character sketches down. To flesh them all out. To make my bad boys be more, I dunno, wolf like. Wolf primed? Wolf enabled? I gotta come up with something better than that when the contest begins (I have to keep reminding myself that I m not competing with anyone other than myself to get the job done). The contest is to complete a novel in 30 days with at least 50K words in the body of the book. I think I can do this.
So why the blog post?
Because I am on pins and needles about it all. About the whole crafting it by the seat of my pants. Yeah, I am pretty much a pantser (what writers call themselves when they write by the seat of their pants) when I write. I have a general frame work, I have fully formed characters (and I do mean formed when I say it). I also have a majority of the plot line fully formed in my head before I ever put a word down on digital bytes and bits. It’s all a matter of hammering it all out.
Love a boy in wolf’s clothing, don’t you?
Alfred Hitchcock (an idol/hero of mine) often said that for him the fun of making his movies or telling his stories was in the planning of it. The rest was just busy work to get it all down. I sooooo, get that. Epically get it. Epically – to the nth degree – do I get it.
Hank O’Malley (my Omega – and if you don’t know what those are in Lycanthrope lore, you better do your homework like I have) is my protag. He’s an amazing character. I love him already. I can’t wait to throw him to the wolves of Sparrow’s Holler (so to speak).
NaNoWritMo – it’s just around the corner as the final days of October come to a close. November 1 is the date. I start writing my new opus then. It’ll be far shorter than my other works, but I can already see a path to writing a series on these boys. It’s an ensemble cast from many aspects, so yeah, it could definitely grow into a real series. Hell, it’ll probably be even gayer than that whole Teen Wolf thing on MTV.
Sort of a Happy Days cross with Teen Wolf – eh, no, wait. That isn’t what I was shooting for at all. Well, it’ll come together I am sure.
In 30 days.
Thirty…
Days…
Tic-toc, tic-toc, tic-toc…
Our Dirty Little Secret…
Our Dirty Little Secret –
A discussion with Savannah Smythe on the release of her new work – Dirty Little Secret and a few other topics that cropped up…
Dirty Little Secret – by Savannah Smythe
SA Collins: So when do you think you can recall when you found yourself bit by the whole writing bug? Was there some impetus that got you into writing?
Savvy Smythe: I’ve always loved weaving stories, even from a very young age, probably to get me out of some kind of trouble, I guess. But I never thought of writing anything down until after my first child was born. I think it was boredom more than anything else. I was hitting the treadmill at the gym and my daughter was in daycare, and my first character just kind of popped into my head and said “Hello.”
Actually, that’s a lie. He said something like “Hey, bitch, I want a woman and a decent story. Get to it.” He can be rude like that…
SA Collins: Yeah, that’s usually a hallmark of a writer: our characters really sort of control us – dictate when things need to get done.
Savvy Smythe: Absolutely. I think all writers with fiction should identify with this, and sometimes you need to go with the flow and see what comes out. It can surprise you. It sure as hell surprised me!
SA Collins: Did your writing always have the erotic slant it has now? If so, why do you think that is? If not, how did it evolve into that?
Savvy Smythe: It certainly didn’t start out as erotica, although I’ve never shied away from portraying sexual scenes between my characters. How the erotica thing started was simple. I couldn’t get the damned book published so I sliced, diced and spiced it as an experiment, because sex sells, right? I knew I had a juicy story, but it needed a lot more juice to interest the erotica market.
To answer your other question, I guess I’ve always been interested in, not the ins and outs of sex per se, but the interplay between characters, the growing intensity of feelings and setting moods where sensual happenings can take place
A little man on man action never hurts…unless its done right.
SA Collins: So, given that, did you find that your sales changed when your writing did? Or was it a slow evolving process? Do you still see your work as erotica? Because, here’s my take on it: I really don’t think that sexual situations make it erotica. Sex is a part of the human condition. I think what erotica is is a piece written to titillate and inflame, sometimes at the expense of a real story, but when woven into a real bona fide tale, then I think it crosses back over to adult fiction. I think you can have a sexually active and sex positive character without it being erotica. Do you know what I am getting at here?
Savvy Smythe: Yes, I do, and I agree on the whole. There are different levels of erotica though. In my mainstream contemporary fiction books, the sex is used as a potent way of luring two characters together and making them want each other, and when they do, it’s fireworks. But in my role as an erotica writer, the sex is definitely the most important thing. I wrote straight erotica for Virgin Books for five years, and sales were good enough that they kept renewing my contract, which was great. But after a while it became slightly boring to be honest because the sex was the main event (as it has to be in an erotica book, obviously.) The challenge was to make it interesting. Actually, I nearly got my editor fired because my attempt at making it interesting contravened several decency laws – oops!
So yes, there is a big difference between the role that sex plays in erotica and “mainstream” fiction. And this goes back to what I was saying about different forms of erotica. There are the one-handed reads, and books with characters that people can actually get involved with. Three dimensional characters with stories that don’t insult the intelligence of the person reading them. And that’s what I tried to do.
SA Collins: Fair enough. The reason I bring it up is that when I started I first listed myself as an erotic writer but after Angels fully took form it was clear that while sex was present, the sexual situations psychologically advanced the characters (more than just bringing them together) in that my shy boy became increasingly more assertive in his life – every facet of his life – which said to me that the sex, while erotic in nature, really was a different device altogether. I get the whole differing degrees of erotica writing – and I am not disparaging it as a whole genre, but I often wonder if we’re too motivated to label it as such when maybe we aren’t seeing the greys in those erotic levels as something else altogether. You know?
Savvy Smythe: Yes, and a lot of it comes down to marketing and being honest about the genre the book is for. And that isn’t necessarily the market you assume it is for when you write it, if you assume anything at all. Black Lace (Virgin Books) was obviously erotica, aimed at women, and that was easy because I knew my genre. Since then, I haven’t written any erotica until this year, when I began What You Wish For, which eventually turned into Dirty Little Secret. I wrote the book, knowing I was writing erotica, but I hadn’t given any thought about who it was aimed at, I was just writing the story. Because once you start getting hung up on markets, etc., your creativity can go out the window. In a way, this is what happened with What You Wish For, which is why it eventually became DLS.
And sex is obviously a great selling point, but just because there is a lot of it in a book, doesn’t make it erotica, necessarily. I’m saying that sometimes, erotica isn’t always there to give a thrill, but to engender all kinds of emotions in the reader. As well as giving a thrill!
A little 411 on the DLS low-down.
SA Collins: So you mentioned Dirty Little Secret, which is your recent release, right? How did that happen – it started out as a straight erotica piece, right?
Savvy Smythe: It did, and I guess it was aimed at women because that’s the erotica market I’ve always written for. Straight men on the whole don’t read a lot of erotica. They like to see the T and A before their eyes.
SA Collins: True enough – men are very visual.
Savvy Smythe: But then a strange thing happened. My two male characters fell in love before my eyes. It was a natural process and I can honestly say I didn’t force the issue. It just came about. So I went with it, again not thinking about the marketing issue, although I wanted to publish the story in three parts. But when I had finished the story and had three parts, one of straight erotica and two of gay erotica, I immediately saw I had a problem. Maybe this is an assumption here, but I guessed that gay men wouldn’t be interested in straight erotica featuring women, but I wasn’t so sure about women wanting to read gay erotica. So I did some digging and began to read gay erotica. Actually, I had been reading gay erotica as soon as I knew I was going to write it, to find out what I was up against.
SA Collins: Is it something you find interesting to write about? Or was this a one off “walk in a different park” sort of thing?
Savvy Smythe: I feel very comfortable writing about men, either in sexual situations or in burgeoning relationships, but I’m aware that I have a lot to learn. I didn’t want to insult people by just swapping women for men and writing “dick lit” because men and women’s motivations are totally different.
SA Collins: Now you’ve hit upon one of the things that sticks in my craw about the M/M genre as it stands now. As a gay man/author I have collected a number of these writings and what truly astounds me is how very little it has to do with what our lives are like. I mean, I am all for the fantasy of a good yarn, but some of the emotive qualities are completely off the mark of how men feel – and often gay men at that. I think it stems from women not really getting that as a gay man you always, whether you can play off the straight male thing in society or not, are looking over your shoulder, sometimes swapping pronouns to make people around you comfortable. Yet the works in the genre never really reflect that. So while it’s “gay” it really is with air quotes completely implied. Do you think that the genre needs some evolving in that manner? Or do you think it is what it is…? I know it’s one of the reasons why I refuse to ally myself with that sort of market as my main market. Because my work will not follow those sort of entrenched guidelines..
Savvy Smythe: I think that every genre is evolving, mostly thanks to the ebook market. People have access (should they choose to accept it) to almost any fiction they please. But yes, to answer your last question, the gay erotica I read, written by women is very different to that written by men. It seems to be either fantasy (wolf/biker/shapeshifter) or the other stereotypes (soldier, cop, mechanic) and I think that says a lot more about what the writer finds erotic than what her audience will. Not that there is anything wrong with that but don’t mistake it for bona fide erotica aimed at gay men.
The erotica I’ve read by men is a lot more meaty, with more of their senses being used – which is surprising to me but very enlightening. Also, every book I’ve read reflects the “over the shoulder” situation you described, where as a lot of women tend to write about being gay and proud of it, or being completely and happily segregated from “normal” society. So in order to write erotica for the gay market, I want to learn to write more like a man, and that is something which I find really exciting. I’m not degenerating women’s writing AT ALL. There are some really gritty women writers out there. I want to be one of them. Dirty Little Secret is a bit of fun, a toe in the water, but I’ve learned a lot since then.
Who doesn’t need a little hug now and then?
SA Collins: I sort of liken it to me writing about a young black woman – I might be able to imagine it, I might even be in the midst of the community, but there is something intrinsically truthful about the work when it comes from the source. I don’t blame women writing M/M erotica for their own pleasure but what I find sort of bewildering is all of the rainbow cons that really don’t seem to have very much to do with what we are working towards. To me its more about women who love the hell out of men (as do gay men) but write about them in gay situations as they would like to fantasize about men but the ‘gayness’ of them really isn’t much in play here other than its homosexual in nature. I think the genre as a whole needs to do a little soul searching and more gay male voices need to rise to the top and write about us as we really are. Only then will the genre as a whole evolve. Otherwise I think it will just be women fantasizing about men as they want to see them rather than what we truly are… does that make sense?
Savvy Smythe: Yeah, it does, although I would say that it isn’t the role of erotica to reflect the angst going on in real life. One of the big no-nos in straight erotica are characters with kids. No-one wants to read about child-care arrangements before the fucking starts. They don’t want to hear about women with problems juggling their lives, or non-consensual sex (another rule I broke – I’m all about breaking rules) or any of the other issues that people in “normal” life experience. It is a fantasy after all.
But, this also begs the question about what motivates women to write gay erotica. Yes, a lot of it is a fantasy about what gay men are like in bed. And I think some women do it because they feel SAFER writing about gay men.
SA Collins: Why? Because they think gay men aren’t reading it to say – hey, wait a minute there —where am I in all of this? What do you mean by safer?
Savvy Smythe: Because they can have their kicks writing and reading about it without feeling they have to compete. In erotica books, the heroine is mostly beautiful, or has some quality that makes her irresistible to the hero. Some women feel threatened by that and think, “I would never be like that. I don’t want to hear about some bitch with perfect tits getting banged by Mr. Hardjaw.” But put Mr. Hardjaw with Mr. Sexyabs and hell, yes!
SA Collins: That sort of seems rather simplistic in a way. I mean you’ve read a bit of my book… right?
Savvy Smythe: I’m reading it now, but as you said, your book isn’t erotica, it’s a character study. Erotica is there mainly for one purpose, and that is to get off, right? DLS is erotica. I want to make it intelligent but to be honest, I wanted to turn people on first. And THAT is the prime purpose of erotica
SA Collins: True enough but let’s talk character for a second. I think that in erotica (or hell, even mainstream lit fic) women make a very interesting mistake in my mind when writing male characters. I think because in their own lives they hear the brevity of how we communicate and make an assumption that things go on like that in our heads. That we think in bits and bytes and not strung together long trained thoughts. In Angels almost 70 percent of it is Elliot’s (my protag) inner monologue. Men do think quite intensely and prolonged as we analyze our world around us – the difference is we don’t talk a lot about it. Gay men more than our hetero counterparts to a degree, but even so – gay men have short hand talking that does the same brevity communication that our straight brothers do. Most female writers miss the boat on that. I found that to be rather telling. It was one of the reasons why Elliot’s part of my series is so inside his head. It was far more interesting for me to express him internally (thus, the character study) yet, walk you through what he feels and thinks while he’s having hot man-on-man action…
Savvy Smythe: Men are from Mars, women are from Venus?
The whole Men and Women thing – sorta lost on me, but Savvy seems to know quite a bit about it…
SA Collins: The inner monologue men go through isn’t as developed as I think it can be. I think it is simplistic for most (definitely not all) female writers to assume that how the men in their world act are how we really are. I think the inner monologues are not as complex as we sometimes can be.
Savvy Smythe: Yeah, I get that.
SA Collins: Sure. I mean I turned you onto John Rechy’s work… you said that you found his voice to be very powerful and you were getting some of that from him, right? Did it surprise you to read his take on male sexuality?
Savvy Smythe: I think we women make the assumption that men are simple souls, because to be honest, men have told us that for long enough. Perhaps to stop us over-thinking things we have no hope of understanding? It wasn’t a surprise to read John Rechy’s take but it was enlightening, because I, like a lot of women have always thought that men are more visual than anything else.
The Sexual Outlaw as I saw it in 1979.
SA Collins: True enough. I mean my daughter is on match.com looking for potential boyfriend material and one guy got playful with her and started to talk about the big trucks and tractors he drives around at work (like a big boy would). She got all over analytical about it and I stopped her in her tracks and said – “Sweetie, sometimes a tractor or a truck is just that. He’s being playfui, don’t make it a political statement.”
So I get we can be forthright in our statements and they get over-analyzed to the point of absurdity (in most men’s opinions).
Savvy Smythe: I think women are always looking for the hidden message. It’s a defense mechanism to stop them from getting hurt. It doesn’t work though.
SA Collins: When I read Rechy’s work as a gay teen (this was the late 70’s mind you) it was truly enlightening that all of the things I was questioning about myself as a man (let alone a gay one) were right there in his pages.
Savvy Smythe: A comparative work for women would be The Women’s Room, by Marilyn French.
The Women’s Room – Marilyn French
SA Collins: All of the textures and the senses that we as men go through. This is what I often find missing in M/M erotica… the assumptions are never analyzed by the author – simply taken as hard cold fact about us and not inquired or asked about. I know some men won’t cough up the goods or admit to what really goes on in our heads. In fact, I spend more time talking to my straight friends about their emotional shit that would truly astound their wives and girlfriends. I often laugh that straight women and straight men don’t really get what a great ally gay men are to them. They assume that our sex is so perverse that they can’t possibly be of any help to them. But I know I’ve helped my straight co-workers on a number of occasions because I gave them some insight on why their ladies might be feeling the way they were or expressing themselves how they were. The dialog is changing but I always sort of laugh on how much of our POV on their own relationships go unasked. I always tell my daughter – I may be gay, but honey, I know my sex…
Savvy Smythe: I think straight women get the gay ally thing. Most women yearn for a GBF. (Sex and the City, anyone?) BUT, I think it’s become a bit like a status symbol, rather like a designer handbag. I’d be willing to bet that the women wanting a GBF want him so they can give some insight into men and make them feel good about themselves. Actually, if you examine that dynamic, it looks a bit one-sided. Are the women with GBFs any wiser about how gay men think, feel, function day to day? This is a genuine question because I haven’t a clue! Would be interesting to find out though.
It seems as if we are all shouting at each other over a divide the size of the Grand Canyon. Can women ever really understand what is going on in men’s heads, whether they are gay or not?
More on this discussion coming soon – in the interim I highly suggest you check out Savannah’s brilliant and provocative works via the following channels:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Google+
It’s a SMUTTY Book…
It’s a SMUTTY Book…
-or- Why I think that warning labels and smutty classifications are in the eye of the beholder.
But I can’t say it as eloquently as this man can… Enjoy! (I know I did)
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This one goes out to my author pal, Savannah Smythe who posed a comment question from my last blog post. I encourage everyone to visit this brilliant and engaging website.
To her question, here is my more eloquent reply (ala Tom Lehrer).
The Color In Your Characters
The Color In Your Characters
I’m talking about secondary characters. The minor roles that give your world texture, give it context. I’ve always sort of gravitated to secondary characters in stories. Why? Pretty damned simple to sort out. Given the heterosexist world we live in, as a gayboy I had to often look for subtle clues if a secondary character was gay or not. Then it would be – ooh, what’s he doing? What’s he about?
It was always the secondary characters in stories that held my interest – almost more than the main characters. Actually, it’s the ensemble work that usually draws me in. I love great ensemble casts.
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer it was Xander and Spike that kept me going in that show. Willow too. Far more than Buffy (who always seemed one note in comparison to the other characters in her world). Don’t get me wrong I am a HUGE Buffy fan. Hell, put me down as a Joss Whedon fan, period.
The cast of one of my all time favorite shows – Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
There are many such shows that garnered my attention in great part because of the ensemble of secondary characters that fleshed out the world the main character had to play in.
In Downton, Cousin Violet (Dame Maggie Smith) of course provides just about as much color a human being can in a character.
Maggie Smith as Lettice in the brilliant play Lettice and Lovage.
I had the pleasure of watching Dame Maggie in Lettice and Lovage on Broadway when she was in the title role of Lettice Duffey. It was written for her and man oh man did it show. I was fifth row center (literally) and the air was electric – it tingled along my skin whenever she was on stage – and okay, she was the main character, but what it did do was give me a real sense of the subtleties of character development.
The brilliant and crisp play written for Maggie Smith – Lettice and Lovage.
Lettice Duffey was a broad character – one that would rival another monolithic strong woman character – Auntie Mame (Dennis). Yet, in both cases (Rosalind Russell and Maggie Smith’s turn as Mame and Lettice), they knew just the right amount of hubris to ground the character to make them infinitely accessible.
So yes, main characters can be just as colorful, just as compelling (they are main characters, after all) but for me, those actors who portray these iconic characters, when they get their teeth into a secondary role, you get such nuance and flavor from their portrayal that I can’t help but be drawn in.
Lois Smith (center) with Ryan Kwantan and and Anna Pacquin from True Blood.
It was that way with True Blood, too – I was all about Pam and Eric. Sookie and Bill were beside the point, say nothing of the brilliant, brilliant turn of Ryan Kwantan as Jason. But my first love in True Blood was always Lois Smith as Sookie’s grandmother. I just LOVE Lois Smith. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in something I didn’t like her performance. She was never big and brassy. But lord does she permeate each scene she’s in. Her portrayal as Sookie Stackhouses beloved grandmother was carefully measured but incredibly believable. She was the grounding that Sookie needed to make her accessible. Without her in the beginning of the True Blood world, it would have not had the same balance. It would have been too fantastic. Gran kept us sane and safe (to a degree).
Okay, so you’re probably saying ‘yeah, but your just talking about acting and not story telling.’ The obvious retort is that plays and screenplays are just one more way to tell a story. Books acted out sort of thing. I come from theater so I tend to gravitate to that world whenever I think of storytelling. So the whole reason I am using performance storytelling as opposed to literary works is that I wanted to put as many people as possible on the same page in their minds. Much easier.
Freeman and Cumberbatch hamming it up – the modern take on Watson and Holmes.
But that’s not to say I can’t use some classic characters in literary circles that I can put out there to make my point – Dr. Watson to Sherlock? Though to be honest, it could be argued that John Watson was more of an elevated secondary character but he’ll do as an example. A story without John Watson just wouldn’t be right. Watson is our accessibility to the heady brilliance of Sherlock.
In Dorian Gray it is the secondary characters that give us our main characters color. They provide Dorian with the allure and the brutal sensuality – it is through their eyes, their voice that we get a flavor of Dorian before he ever hits the page himself.
Reeve Carney as Dorian Gray in the brilliant show “Penny Dreadful”
In my own story, Angels of Mercy, I tried to sort this out with my boys. Marco has his cousin Francesca, a wild but über hot cousin that as much as she is beguiling she is also the most loyal companion to Marco. It was important for me to have someone like her in Marco’s world to give him something to play against in his family life. In book one of the series, we don’t really get any real sense of Marco’s mother or father. It’s all about Frankie (Francesca) that we get a sense of Marco’s home life. I really love her for so many reasons. She’s a goddess on steroids but with a heart of gold underneath that Venus allure.
For Elliot, the main POV character of the first book, it’s his mother and his best friend Greg that give us a peek into Elliot’s world. Where Marco’s world is big and bright and full of adoration from the masses, Elliot’s is the exact opposite. All he has in his small world is Greg and his mother, and then Marco himself.
That was the question I had burning inside of me as Marco and Elliot began to form – I wanted to know what would happen if the geeky artsy shy out gay kid became boyfriend to the highest profile jock on campus. In book one, we sort of get that answer.
Yet, it isn’t just the characters that I’ve mentioned that are what provide texture to Marco and Elliot’s world. There’s Beau Hopkins. Caramel colored, massively beautiful and completely black of heart. Beau is the danger in this world. He’s a dark horse in a growing dark world for my boys. Beau is a user. He’s a manipulator. He comes from a very confining world of Football and religion. His father is a preacher in town and quite hard on his son. Beau, while formulaic in that he’s the atypical Preacher’s son, he also has a couple of surprises that Elliot gets him to admit something that only proves to tighten the screws on the horrific end to the first book.
If that weren’t enough, we have a very opportunistic cheerleader – Cindy Markham. She’s trouble in a pretty package with all the charm of a man-eating piranha. She’s a manipulator in a massively whacked out way – emphasis on MANipulate. She and Beau are the boys worst possible nightmare.
The final cover artwork. Blood included.
Then there’s the boy’s greatest asset – Elliot’s mother and best friend – Kayla Donahey and Greg Lettau. These are the boy’s home base. They are the rock that allow the boys to rise and dream beyond their existence in Mercy High. Then when the world seems full, the ensemble is set, I bring Danny Jericho into the mix. Danny’s the wild card. Danny’s the boy who will put all of the characters into a tailspin. He’s the great unknown. He’s also the boys secret weapon. Though he makes his appearance late in the book, he soon becomes the boy they can’t do without.
While the story is about the geeky gay kid and the über hot and popular jock and their reach for the stars, I wanted my secondary cast to be just as rich, just as textured – maybe even more so. I mean, I didn’t want termites in costume (which is what we call scenery chewers on stage). You know, characters that pull focus. Hopefully, if I’ve done my job, my characters embolden the story, they give it its legs.
And it only gets better with the second book (told from Marco’s perspective) in that the two secondary characters that I had in the background in book one come to the fore – Angus Carr and Nick Donahey. I LOVE THESE MEN! Oh, gods, how I fell in love with Elliot’s dad and Marco’s new found friend at his future school (Stanford University). These men are beyond brilliant. Angus just has his heart on his sleeve, he’s so amazing I get giddy like a school girl whenever he comes into the scene. I’ve already peppered the story I am telling with a secondary tale that I can always spin off in this world with Danny and Angus (yeah, that was a minor spoiler).
I am always thinking about my secondary cast. It’s how my main characters shine – at least to my way of thinking.
So whether it’s Kayla, Greg or Danny – Beau, Cindy or Francesca. It’s all about the textures in the background to my world that make everything just a bit more dense, a deeper flavor to the tale I am telling.
The stars of the show can only shine if they’ve got others behind them as the backdrop – the colors and textures that make them who they are. And I make it my business to know EVERY facet of their lives before they ever step onto the novel stage. They are fully fleshed out in my head before they utter their first words. It’s just how it goes with me.
I just can’t think of any other way to do it.