Frankencharacter: The Meme
21 Apr
I’m so unqualified to choose the Top Ten Favorite short stories by me, in the trend begun by Aaron Polson, but I’ve loved reading them in a creepy stalker “Oh, I hope some day I can have ten stories I’d send out!” way. There’s something comforting and entertaining about knowing how a story got under a writer’s skin, even when I’ve not read it.
Told you I was being creepy.
The Top Five Favorite Characters was the next meme to infect everyone with its juicy viral goodness. I first saw that one over at Catherine J. Gardner‘s, who got it from Danielle Ferries. Equally awesome, since character is definitely my favorite thing about reading and writing.
Since I have way more novels in various states of progress/out with someone-or-other/in the drawer than I do short stories, I’m sort of qualified to reciprocate on that one, but it’s a bit meh. I mean, no one’s seen them except–
Oh wait. My friends read this, and you’ve read my ridiculous novels! Go Team Friends!
I can’t actually do favorites, because that will start a Civil War. So these are a few really loud, enjoyable-to-write characters, ones that kind of make me do it their way.
1. Aldo Caruso. No one will be shocked– dude has been in my head and my stories since I was 13. He’s a vampire, but I recently wrote a short with a weird alive version of him. (Hoping it’ll meet with approval; I’ll let you know.) He’s a bugf$%k insane murderer, prone to cutting up his family and friends, and a tragically unattractive artist.
2. Alex Franklin, from Wolfton Paranormal. Alex hears evil things from behind mirrors. He snorts crushed up Vicodin to remain functional, he’s a nymphomaniac, and without his bromance he would absolutely be dead in a ditch. I did a weird alternate-sandbox version of him and his bromance in The Mirror for Voices. That story is literally Alex’s worst nightmare. Man, was he pissed when I wrote it.
3. Elliot Prince. Strange one, because he’s actually from a short story– one TBR in Arkham Tales, Cemetry Gates (or the Dubious Magic of Elliot Prince). He’s a super narcissistic, pretentious faux-intellectual, and he has Bad Magic and No Qualms. He also thinks he’s sexy. No wonder he took over, I guess.
4. Becca Appleby from my current first draft, The Resurrectionist. She’s a 20-year-old woman in Philadelphia, 1820s-ish (nearly an old maid!). She has a veneer of fierce practicality that’s really just refusal to be thrown off balance. It’s sheer will. I can throw grave-robbing, whore-mongering, grog, and the undead at her, and she just goes on with business– after having a good scream.
5. Kay Healy from The Audio File, an urban fantasy based on the idea that a small percentage of humanity have powers that affect the senses. He’s this kind of pathetic ex rent boy with dampened (read: inferior) powers. I think I like him because even if the people try to make him ashamed of what he is, he at least knows what it is, and somewhere in there secretly loves it. He’s also a happy drunk, and in vino veritas.
So give it a try. Yeah, I tend to shift my characters around into different ‘verses and see what happens. It’s like an exercise in acting class, or something to that effect. Same starting set of rules, but now you’re in this situation.
Or I’m lazy. Or a little too attached to my characters. Shh.
Completely off topic: I just noticed that at the end of Ghetto Defendant, Ginsberg starts saying the mantra at the end of the Heart Sutra. Om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi swaha. How many times have I listened to Combat Rock, even since I lived in Kathmandu and had to say the Heart Sutra every morning, literally, and I’m just now catching this?
I love when music you take for granted as a kid suddenly makes sense once you’re (sort of) grown up. Sometimes I think having heard it a million times makes you just stop listening. Until one day, when you start again.
Yeah, effing deep, maaan.
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Now playing: The Clash – Death Is a Star
via FoxyTunes
Your love for your characters shines through in this post.
Love ‘em. I need to spend more of my time character building.
I do love them, Cate– yet I keep killing them. Then again, some refuse to die, even when I originally plan for it. Like Kay. That jerk.
Aaron, sounds to me like you do plenty of that! I always go overboard… which is how I think I end up with so many novels instead of short stories :/
You’ve had a character in your head since you were 13? Now that’s loyalty!
Hell yeah. My best friend and I used to read what we’d written that night to each other over the phone. I remember the first time Aldo popped up, and she interrupted me to say, “Aldo?! That’s a terrible name!” She still makes a face when I bring him up
I can’t actually do favorites, because that will start a Civil War.
It’s funny… because… it’s true.
Natalie @4 – Yes, loyalty – but whose? The author or the character? =P
So true.
And man, safe to say that’s a long-suffering relationship on both sides…