Books, My Emotions After Reading A Really Awesome Book Called Allegiant, Evil Character-Murdering Authors, And A Bunch Of Random Book-Related Thoughts.

I spent most of this morning crying over a book. Eighteen months ago, I read this totally amazing book called Divergent. Reading it shifted something in me, altered my outlook on life, on humanity, on myself. I have always questioned things, analysed things, and Divergent made me analyse myself, question myself. It helped me discover more of who I am. Each time I reread it, I get something more out of it. And each time I reread, I find myself relating more and more to the main character.

Yesterday, I bought Allegiant, the final book in the Divergent trilogy. I planned to have a “Sleep is for the weak” attitude and stay up all night reading, but at about quarter to three, I put the book down and decided to finish it in the morning.

So when I woke up this morning, I read the final 116 pages of Allegiant. And I spent the last 50ish pages completely sobbing. I found the ending beautiful, in a tragic way. It was so human, so heartbreaking, and so honest.

I always thought that The Hunger Games was the book that changed me the most, but now I think it was Divergent. That book taught me so much about basic human personality traits such as selflessness and bravery. But the thing I love most about that book is the characters.

I think Tris, the main character, is one of my all-time favourite fictional characters. I love her because she’s not perfect, and she doesn’t always make the right decisions. But she is brave, she is selfless, she is a hero. And she is amazing. She is so human, yet she is so much more than human.

The characters of Tris and Tobias seem so real, and when I read those books, I feel like I am reading about real people, not just fictional characters. Tris and Tobias’s relationship is flawed, it is imperfect, because they are imperfect, but there is something pure about it, something beautiful. They belong together not just because they love each other, but because they make each other better people.

When I read books like Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant, I am reminded of why I want to be a writer. Some books can affect people so deeply, and I want to write like that. I want to create characters that become so real that they carve their way into people’s hearts. I want to create characters that make a mark.

When I finish reading book series’s that I love, I always have this feeling of what will I do with my life now? And for some reason I don’t have that with Allegiant. Perhaps this is because the ending felt so…final, I guess. It was a conclusion to a chapter in those characters lives, and it was a conclusion to a chapter in the readers’ lives.

When I am obsessed with a book, I always think the obsession will never fade. When I read The Hunger Games, my sister said: “You won’t still be obsessed with this in a year from now.” I was, by the way, but in a different way. Some obsessions fade, they give way to something else. I guess the obsession is like having a crush on the book, and then the crush turns to love, and what you feel for the book is a lot deeper.

I am not crazy obsessed with The Hunger Games any more. I love it; it is one of my top two favourite books (oh my gosh, I actually managed to narrow it down to two!), and it means a lot to me. The Hunger Games showed me a whole genre of books I never would have read; it introduced me to dystopia, to post-apocalyptic novels. If I hadn’t have read THG, I wouldn’t have written CONSEQUENCE.

With Divergent, I love it differently to how I love/loved THG. There is a part of me which is still in the Book Crush stage. And there is a part of me that has moved on to the In Love With The Book stage. Normally, after a year and a half, I would have started to move on from a book, no matter how much I loved it, but I haven’t done that with the Divergent trilogy.

Those books have been there for me whenever I needed them. They were the books I read when I was upset and needed to feel better, the books I read when I needed to restore my faith in humanity (which is ironic, given the genre), they were like a friend, I guess.

Some of the boys at school seem to find it entertaining to tell me that books are a waste of paper. I am always tempted to reply with “You’re a waste of oxygen”, but I don’t think that’s a very nice thing to say, so instead I just start defending books, and my voice gets higher and higher pitched, and they tend to respond with a particular word that starts with F. (Why do teenage boys swear so much?)

The reason I get so defensive when they insult books, is that for a long time books have been my everything. Books have made me who I am; they have shaped my personality, moulded me into this person who I could never have been were it not for fiction. And yes, that sometimes means that I act a bit crazy because I would fit better in a fictional world than in the real one, but I don’t care.

Books rest on the line between the magic and the ordinary. To some people they are mundane and ordinary, and to some people they are a whole world. How many things are there that are like books? One of the annoying boys at school who told me that books were a waste of paper said that books were pointless because you can just watch TV instead. If I hadn’t had to go into a chemistry lesson at that exact moment, I would have gone into full rant mode (which is always scary) and explained about how television is NOTHING compared to books.

When you watch TV, it’s all there, it’s already made. When you read a book, you have to use the writer’s words to weave a world inside your head. You have to create something based on another person’s creation. A book is a body that has no blood. It has flesh, organs, but there is a vital part missing. The reader’s imagination is the blood. It flows through the book, makes it work, makes it a living thing.

As a writer, it is sometimes hard to think about the fact that when someone reads my books, they don’t read the book in my head. They don’t get my thoughts, my imagination; they only get my words, and they have to make of them what they will. The book I write is not the book they read. There is a part of me that wants to scream “You will read this my way! I made this! I wrote this! You have to see it how I see it!” And there is another part of me that marvels at the beauty of the whole book arrangement. My words, my silly little thoughts that I write down, become something more than me when other people read them. They change, they take on their own lives, and they constantly shift and alter. They will never be my words again, because I have given them to other people. And I’m okay with that.

As a writer, I sometimes forget that I am a reader, too. I forget that what it’s like to read a book, because I’m too lost in the process of creating books. When I read books like Allegiant, The Fault in Our Stars, or The Book Thief, I am suddenly hit with the realization that I am a complete hypocrite. What do those books have in common? They all made me cry. BECAUSE THE EVIL AUTHORS MURDERED MY FAVOURITE CHARACTERS!

It’s only a few hours since I finished reading Allegiant, so the pain is still pretty raw. I knew how it ended before I read it; I knew I would cry at the end. But there’s a difference between knowing something’s going to happen, and reading about it happening.

And then I remember that I am one of those evil authors who murder characters. I mean, the main feedback I get about CONSEQUENCE is “Why did you kill Persephone?” The answer to that, by the way, is that I was killing Drew, and I wanted to spare Persephone the pain of living without him. I’m nice like that, see. Or maybe I killed her because I thought she was kind of one-dimensional. (I’ve changed my mind about that now.)

I regretted killing Persephone the moment I started writing AMEND. I regret killing my characters. I regret being an evil character-murderer. And no, that does not mean I am suddenly going to change my mind about killing the love interest at the end of the book I’m currently working on.

I think sometimes characters do have to die. Not because the authors are sadists who want to brutally murder the readers’ feelings, but because it would be unrealistic if all the minor or horrible characters died, and the heroes were left unscathed.

I, personally, like to kill off my favourites, because I can really get into the pain of their deaths. In the second novel I ever wrote, there was this character called Maeve. She was a little bit like Phoenix in some ways (troubled past, hated lots of people, had a best friend who was kind of naïve). Maeve was my favourite character. Naturally, I had her throat slit. That was the first time I killed one of my favourite characters. I loved it. Can I just reiterate that I am not evil, not a sadist, and not some weird twisted monster? I just like to write dramatic books.

Yet when I read books where characters die… Well, I think the fact that I have spent half the day crying over Allegiant is a clue as to how I react. I am broken; Allegiant shattered my heart into a thousand tiny pieces. But it was worth it. I think if a book/book series has an important message, or has a lasting effect on people, it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t end happily. It’s the story which makes a book, and the ending is only part of that. It’s not the ending that makes the reader fall in love with the story; it’s the characters, the words, the plot. Judging a book by its ending is like judging a person by how they die. Judging a book by the story is like judging a person by how they live.

^ Me with Allegiant, before it broke my heart.

The Hero.

So I haven’t written a blog in about two months. That is one of the many joys of writer’s block. Other than writer’s block, the main reason I haven’t written any blogs is because I have been busy. (This is a very shocking fact. Normally I just sit around thinking about books.)

And the reason I’ve been busy? I have started going to school. For somebody who likes to write about human nature, I haven’t really had much experience of being around lots of people. Well, until last week.

Naturally, all this exposure to human nature makes me think about my writing, and about my characters. What I have realized is that humans are absolutely nothing like fictional characters. I mean, I knew this already, but not to the same extent. For example: the character of Kai. He just wouldn’t exist in the real world. As someone who has spent the last week-and-a-half around fifteen-year-old boys, I can say with 100 per cent certainty that they are nothing like they are in books. Specifically, nothing like they are in my books.

And that started me thinking about the concept of The Hero. The Hero is the good guy; examples of his personality traits include “getting the girl” and “defeating evil”. The Hero isn’t always a guy, sometimes he’s a girl, but today I’m talking about male versions of The Hero.

Girls who read a lot of books often find themselves frustrated by the lack of perfect males in the world. Don’t get me wrong, there are some nice guys in the world. But is nice enough? Nice doesn’t slay dragons and carry you away to castles in the clouds. Yes, booknerds want their guy to be sweet and kind, but they also want him to be heroic and brave, to be dark and mysterious. And in real life, most of those qualities don’t mix.

So where does the idea of The Hero come from? How do you get from the average real guy to Mr Perfect? How did this archetype come about when most human beings are so…depressingly average? One of my theories is that it came about in the age of knights and chivalry, when the act of going off to kill people over a bit of land became glorified. A guy would go off to fight in the 100 Years War, and before he left he would be all like “I love you. Promise to marry me so that if I die I know that you loved me”. And then he went off and killed a load of French guys in the name of “I have protected you from the French, my love. I am a hero.”

Yeah, that’s one theory. The other theory is that people romanticize real life in their heads to make it more interesting. I spend at least fifty per cent of my time doing this. The fact is: things are more interesting when you add some imagination. The problem with this is when you start adding imagination to people. These people are never going to live up to how they are in your head, and you’ll be sorely disappointed, and they’ll be wondering what they did wrong.

The people you meet, the people you see every day, they are almost certainly not going to be The Hero. They’re not going to sweep you off your feet and risk their lives to defend your honour. But The Hero does exist, I am sure of that. His good qualities are just more subtle. I believe in The Hero, I believe that he is out there somewhere. I also believe that any one of us can be The Hero, if we make the right choices. Sometimes the dragons that need slaying are only words, and sometimes the people who need defending aren’t damsels in distress, but just people who need to know they’ve got someone on their side. And as for castles in the clouds, I’m with Henry David Thoreau on that one. He said “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

And now, a round of applause for me because I managed to write a whole blog without using Phoenix as an example of something.

Melinoe, Irina, (and Phoenix), And The Awkward Moment When I Start Turning Into Them.

When I wrote AMEND, I suffered from this horrible little thing known as Second Novel Syndrome. Basically, it means that you’ve written a book, you’re happy with it, and you think you can do it again.

AMEND was the second second novel I had written, so I should have remembered all the terrible writer's block that Second Novel Syndrome creates. But no, I was blissfully oblivious as I started to write.

But the problem with AMEND perhaps wasn’t the book itself, but the characters in it. In CONSEQUENCE I could always relate to at least one of the protagonists. But AMEND was completely different.

For as start, it didn’t have two main characters, it had Melinoe, who was what would be considered as the main character. Then there was Irina, who was still a main character, but was only really in the first half of the book. And then there were characters like Phoenix and Kai and Haden who were still main characters, but not as much as Melinoe and Irina.

Out of these characters, Phoenix was really the only one I could relate to. Except she was thirty-two years old, she had three children, she was married. So I couldn’t really relate to her as much as I could in CONSEQUENCE. Well, except in the scene where she turns Abynechka into a warthog. I could totally relate to her in that bit. It was really awesome writing it, because I was just sitting in bed with a notebook on my lap, laughing, and thinking “revenge is sweet”.

But back to the characters I couldn’t relate to. Melinoe and Irina. My protagonists. From the moment I started writing, I found Melinoe challenging. She was, basically, a bitch. She loved other people’s pain, and she used her own pain as a distraction from the fact that she was completely empty inside, that she was devoid of humanity.

Can you see why I never liked her much? Strangely enough, I do like her now that I don’t have to write about her, because the trilogy is finished, I can see where she came from, and where she ended up, and that gives me a much stronger understanding of her.

But when I was writing it, I just wanted to strangle her. She probably would have liked that, actually. Unless I actually killed her, which would make her rather annoyed. Melinoe doesn’t like it when people try to kill her.

I thought that she was the one character I had ever written who I couldn’t relate to in the slightest, but it turned out, we actually had a couple of things in common. They were small, stupid, inconsequential things, but they were still things. For example, there’s a scene where Melinoe’s on a train, and she’s thinking about all the same people breathing the same air for an extended period of time. If there is one thing I hate, it’s a lack of fresh air. I also hate it when people yawn. It’s one of my weird quirks.

And then there’s the fact that Melinoe and I are both fifteen years old, 5’10”, with curly hair. And we both hate abbreviations. So that means we have, altogether, five things in common. Not very much compared to the many, many similarities between me and Phoenix.

My other main character, Irina, didn’t have that much in common with me either, though I found her easier to relate to, because she was more human, and not just metaphorically, seeing as Melinoe is half robot.

Irina has OCD, and I can’t stand it when things aren’t in the order I like them in. Irina is the youngest sibling, as am I. Irina is extremely tall, ditto me. But the things that make her who she is were nothing like me.

For a start, her whole existence was based on this belief that she wasn’t good enough, that she didn’t deserve respect, that she didn’t deserve to be treated like an equal. I always found it hard to get into that mindset, because my world-view is so completely opposite.

Where she thinks she’s not good enough for anybody, I think not everybody is good enough for me. I don’t mean that as in “Oh, I’m better than everybody” I don’t mean that at all. It’s more like, if someone treated me like crap, I would put them in their place, shout some horrible, yet grammatically correct, things at them, name a character after them, and be done with it. Yet if someone treated Irina like crap, she’d just let them.

And while we’re talking about how different people would react to such situations, I think I’ll just mention that Melinoe would totally try out execution by elephant on anyone who didn’t treat her with the utmost respect.

It’s strange though, Melinoe doesn’t take crap from anybody else, yet she isn’t very nice to herself. Not just in terms of self-harm, but also in the way she relates to other people. She deliberately keeps people at arms length, and ends up making herself miserable in the process. Because deep down, Melinoe shares Irina’s thing of “I am not good enough”.

Both of them are like that because of events that occurred in early childhood. Irina was basically shown that her father would have her die to save himself. And Melinoe…she had two people who fought so hard for her, yet ended up leaving her feeling like they had given up on her. In Melinoe’s eyes, Persephone chose Drew over her, and Haden only wanted her because he needed an heir to the throne.

And because of a lifetime of living with such beliefs, both Melinoe and Irina enter the book with not very good self esteem. The difference is: Melinoe thinks she has a right to be adored, and won’t be happy until she is, whereas Irina doesn’t think she deserves even the slightest bit of attention.

Personally, I’m closer to Melinoe’s way of thinking on this one. The difference is: if I wanted to be worshipped, I would work pretty damn hard to make myself someone that people could look up to. Whereas Melinoe thinks it’s her god-given right to be better than everybody else. Well, she is a Tsarevna, so I guess it goes with the territory.

But the main reason I struggled with AMEND was that I had to get into Melinoe’s head, I had to dig down to the very core of her being and find out what was there. And let me tell you this: Melinoe’s mind isn’t a very good place to be; it’s pretty dark inside. Whereas Irina’s just this faded kind of greyish colour, as though she’s been in the washing machine too many times, as though the same thing’s happened over and over again, and it’s worn her down into a blurry nothingness.

I’m not sure which is worse, Melinoe’s darkness, or Irina’s…blankness. Even in the worst parts of CONSEQUENCE, Phoenix and Persephone still had a light burning within them. I could always relate to that so much more, because all I’ve ever wanted to do was shine.

But lately, my inner Melinoe and my inner Irina have taken a trip to the surface. Because the fact is: when you don’t shine, your light begins to fade. Melinoe isn’t very fun to live with; I see why the Tsar kept her underground, away from the world.

But in a way, Irina’s worse. Melinoe would never give up, but Irina always gives up. Whilst my inner Melinoe was making me treat everyone like crap, avoid the world, and develop a passionate hatred for humanity*, my inner Irina was causing even more trouble, because of the lack of self-worth.

The one thing I can say to my credit is that I have always believed in myself, I have always thought I could do anything I wanted. And then all of a sudden, I no longer believed that. I thought I was worthless, that I wasn’t good enough for anybody. The lovely little rejection letter I got from Scholastic yesterday didn’t exactly do anything to counteract that belief.

When you’ve lost faith in humanity, and lost faith in yourself, what’s left? What is there to stop you thinking that everything is pointless? Yesterday I felt pretty low, to put it mildly.

I was the worst combination of Melinoe and Irina that could ever come about. Okay, given Melinoe’s nature, it wasn’t the worst combination. I wasn’t torturing anyone or anything. But it was the most hopeless one.

But the strange thing was that it was my need to shine that finally got me to stop crying over how crap I felt. Because no matter how black and grey I appear to feel, or truly do feel, there’s always going to be a little bit of light working its way to the surface.

That’s one of the ways I’m most like Phoenix: no matter what’s happening, I’ll always have a need to be noticed, to be seen, to shine. And as messed up a character as she is, she’s the one I am happiest to be like, because her brightness is what will stop her from ever giving up.

She may be annoying, and self-centred, and too smart, and she may have a habit of alienating herself from other people because she thinks they’re not good enough for her, but she has self worth. Why? Because she’s not happy to be invisible. And in order to want to be seen by somebody else, somebody has to believe in themself. It’s the self-belief that makes Phoenix one of my strongest characters. She always puts herself first, because she truly values herself.

* By the way, I no longer have a passionate hatred for humanity. It only lasted a couple of hours.

Compromises.

In books, characters have to make choices, sacrifices, decisions that will change everything. And in real life, people make decisions too. They make decisions that are so unimportant that they make them without thinking. Whether it’s “what coloured socks will I wear today” or “should I sign out of Facebook, or stay on here staring at the screen for another two hours?” the decisions generally aren’t life-changing.

Making a decision is one thing; but what about compromises? What about the decisions that aren’t so easy to make. What about the decisions which are more than what socks you wear?

In CONSEQUENCE, I had this ridiculous habit of making my male characters perfect. Okay, realistically speaking, Kai couldn’t have been anything less than perfect, or Phoenix wouldn’t have gotten together with him. But Drew could have had more flaws, because Persephone is less picky than Phoenix. But no, they were both unrealistically…good.

In AMEND, this issue was to a lesser extent. My main male characters were Blake, Haden, and Kai. Okay, so Kai got even more perfect with age, but the other two weren’t perfect.

Blake almost had Melinoe executed just to prove a point, and although Haden seems all nice and regretful in AMEND, how much can he have truly changed from who he was in CONSEQUENCE? But despite the fact that they actually have flaws, Haden and Blake are still nice guys. My evil little mind is saying “wait till TRANSCEND”, because that book changes everything, but I’m not going to mention that right now.

Anyway, when I finished writing TRANSCEND, I wrote a book called RELEASE. This book was about one of Phoenix’s daughters, and it was set sixteen years after the end of TRANSCEND. Most of the storylines were incredibly disturbing, but it’s actually one of my favourite out of my books.

Anyway, it was in RELEASE that I had my first extremely flawed male main character. And in PLAYING WITH FIRE, the last book I wrote, my male character was also completely flawed. But the problem is: I don’t particularly like writing characters like that.

Okay, part of me is like “Yeah! Tortured fictional guys! Awesome!” but another part of me is like “No! They need to be good, they need to be kind, they need to be there for the main character, rather than constantly keeping her at arm’s length because they’re so caught up in themselves”.

You see, my female characters basically go through hell for practically the entirety of any book I write, and falling in love with the oh-so-perfect male character is meant to be a little bit of light relief from the “Oh crap! The world’s ending!” storylines.

So when the male characters aren’t ridiculously perfect guys who any girl would fall in love with, this poses a problem. Why? Because the female characters have to think “Is this guy really someone who I want in my life? Is he really good for me? Is liking him a waste of time?”

And what if his flaws are things that go against everything the female character believes in? Then what does she do? And can she stop liking him the moment she finds out that he’s not as totally perfect as he originally appeared to be? The answer to that is almost certainly no.

You’d think, as the writer, I could manipulate my characters into doing what I want, right? But I can’t. They just do whatever they want to, and I’m left trying to keep up. It’s not always the best position to be in, that lack of control. I mean, I don’t always like where the story’s going, yet I don’t get a say.

I mean, Miss Intelligent could end up with Mr Lacking In The Brain Department, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it. They could get married and have Baby Of Average Intelligence (a combination of her intelligence and his lack of it). And I, the author, the creator, the maker of these characters, would have my metaphorical hands tied behind my metaphorical back as my characters threw away their lives for people who aren’t good enough.

But am I so superior to them? Do I not make the same mistakes? Do I not like people who aren’t perfect? Do I not waste time on people who just aren’t worth it? I always thought that because I was like Phoenix, perhaps I would find someone like Kai. What if that’s not true? What if in the real world, there is only Mr Lacking In The Brain Department? There seem to be a lot of him in Cumbria, at any rate.

Funnily enough, I don’t think there has ever been a Mr Lacking In The Brain Department in any of my books. But there are other flaws, and some of my characters have them. The question is: what compromises will my female characters make? Will they choose someone who isn’t what they thought they wanted? Will they choose someone whose fatal flaw is something they hate?

It’s actually not really an issue that's come up in my books before, but it crossed my mind last night. I just couldn’t help thinking about what happens when the female character doesn’t have good judgement, and when the male character isn’t perfect. Do they end up together? How does that turn out? Is there such thing as a happily ever after in a situation like this? And what if these characters actually belong together?

Part of me thinks “No! They couldn’t possibly belong together! Not when he’s not good enough for her!” But what I seem to forget is that my female characters aren’t perfect either. They have flaws of their own. Yet people always choose them… Why should the male characters be different? Why do they deserve less love? Why don’t they deserve a happy ending?

Okay, in an ideal world, Miss Intelligent would end up with Mr Intelligent Compassionate Kind Perfect Guy, and Mr Lacking In The Brain Department would end up with Miss Not So Intelligent Either. Though if the latter got together, there wouldn’t be much hope for the human race (albeit a fictional one).

But what about in a fictional equivalent of the real world, rather than an ideal one? What happens to Miss Intelligent when Mr Intelligent Compassionate Kind Perfect Guy either doesn’t exist, or isn’t in her life? Does she settle for Mr Lacking In The Brain Department? Or Mr Extremely Flawed? Or does she become a hermit who lives at the top of Mount Everest?

Does Miss Intelligent actually accept the compromises that she may have to make, or does she think she’s above them? Does she truly believe that she can spend her life waiting around for Mr Perfect? It seems that Miss Intelligent isn’t quite as intelligent as her name implies, if she really thinks she can reside in the real world without living by its rules.

Me And My Love Of Traumatized Characters. (If You Have Any Doubt That I Am Horribly Cruel To My Characters, Please Read Consequence And Amend)

In the first novel I completed, there was a character called Maeve. Maeve was strong, she was tough, and she was fragile. An odd combination, right? Today, I realized that almost all of my favourite characters have that combination, they spring from the same archetype: the Archetype of the “Damaged” Character. In each book I’ve written, my favourite characters are those who have been hurt in some way.

And before anyone jumps to any conclusions, I am not a sadist; I do not love causing my characters pain. Well, I do sometimes, but we’re not going to talk about that right now.

The reason I’ve always been drawn to the Archetype of the Damaged Character is because those characters possess the most strength, and they possess the most vulnerability.

I’m currently writing my eighth novel, so I have created a lot of fictional characters in my time. But out of all of these characters, my favourite is Phoenix, from CONSEQUENCE. She wasn’t originally meant to be a Traumatized Character.

Originally, Phoenix was meant to be a fairly minor character. Her sole purpose was to be a bright, happy friend for Persephone. Yeah, look how that turned out. The moment I started writing her into the story, Phoenix changed from how she was in my head.

Some characters just have a story to tell, and they make sure that I tell it. And some characters don’t just make sure I tell their story, they plant themselves in my brain until they are 100 per cent certain that I will write what they want. Then, when the first two books in a trilogy are published, this joyful little character will helpfully suggest all the things I could have done differently.

In AMEND, there were two scenes that were my favourites to write. SPOILER ALERT! One of these was when Abynechka got turned into a warthog. Phoenix and I were both like “Justice! Yeah!” and the other scene was when Katya kills Jakov.

If I had to choose one favourite scene, I would choose the latter. Why? Because it is when Phoenix is at her strongest, yet her most vulnerable. She has to choose between almost-certain-death and her husband killing someone to save her.

Phoenix likes people to be perfect. This is ironic, given the fact that she is very far from perfect. Kai is the closest thing to perfect that Phoenix has ever found, and if Kai were to kill someone, it would mar that perfection.

For the first fourteen years of her life, all that Phoenix had was herself. And so, she is very protective of herself, and often holds people at arm’s length. But she loves Kai more than she loves herself, and so this scene is the hardest part of the book for her.

Phoenix has to choose between her own well-being, and Kai’s. And she chooses him. She chooses him because he’s her saviour, because he made her life better. And she chooses him because she loves him.

This scene is also proof of Phoenix’s growth throughout the trilogy. Had she been in the same situation, but at the beginning of CONSEQUENCE, she would have saved herself, without even thinking about it.

Perhaps the thing I like most about Traumatized Characters is that I can attempt to heal them. For example, by bringing in the character of Kai, I managed to heal Phoenix ~ or at least, start to heal her. She doesn’t really recover from what happened to her when she was younger until the end of TRANSCEND.

In the book I am currently writing, I have a character called Adelajda (Pronounced ah-de-LIE-dah.) She also fits into the Damaged Character Archetype. She’s a former slave, has anxiety issues, and is falling in love with her dead-half-sister’s boyfriend.

I’m currently writing the second book in a series of four. The first book was written in the first person of one character, Sage. But the second book alternates between three characters: Sage, Flynn, and Adelajda.

With the first book in this series, the characters weren’t in my head: at all. It kind of freaked me out, actually. I was like “what do I do? I’m so lost! I need my characters to tell me what to write”.

I eventually began to accept the fact that I would have to think of storylines myself, rather than relying on the apparently limited imaginations of my characters.

And then I started book two, and it was different. Okay, so my characters aren’t willing to give me any storylines, but they are being a little more vocal. Especially Adelajda.

Her original purpose was to be a very minor character that was in the first book for approximately two pages. Why does this appear to be a recurring theme? Why do my minor characters end up becoming protagonists?

Anyway, I liked her name, so I kept her in the story. Right from the beginning (or near-end, seeing as she didn’t come into the book until quite late on) I knew that she had a story to tell.

So I made her a protagonist in Book Number Two. And she’s actually the easiest character to write. My chapters are, on average, between two and three A4 pages long. I’ve only written one chapter from Adelajda’s perspective so far, but it was five pages long: double my average chapter length.

Two out of three of my current protagonists are Traumatized Characters (Flynn and Adelajda), and those are my two favourites. I like Sage, I do, but sometimes she’s a little bit…naïve, sarcastic, selfish, unthinking, and a whole bunch of other words that I can’t currently think of.

And she falls into my “Original Main Character Archetype”. The Original Main Character Archetype goes somewhat like this: naïve, lived a sheltered life, has never fallen in love before, thinks they can save the world, falls in love with one man who they get together with at approximately halfway through the first book, everybody thinks they’re a heroine who will change the crap-ness of the world they live in.

And, they are known as Original Main Characters, because they usually end up sharing the Main Character role with another, almost certainly traumatized, character.

I have had at least three main characters like that fit this archetype; two of which had another similarity: they both came from food-growing places (vineyard and Turnip Farms). Anyway, these main characters never fall into my Damaged Character Archetype. And, coincidentally, these characters are never my favourites. (The exception to that rule being a character that is in TRANSCEND, who I cannot talk about for reasons to do with giving away one of my biggest plot twists).

I think my overall favourite thing about the Damaged Character Archetype is that those characters have experienced intense emotional pain, and they have survived it. Which is why I tend to give those characters the more challenging storylines: because I know that they can handle it.

Book Number Seven.

This morning, at 01:26 a.m., I finished writing my seventh novel. The ending wasn’t what I had planned, or what I had expected, it just came to me from nowhere.

I always say that I think best in the early hours of the morning, but now I think that I don’t think better, I just think differently. An example of this being that I suddenly wondered why the dirt on Earth was called earth, yet the ground on the Moon wasn’t called moon. These are not things that I think at normal times of day. (Or maybe they are…)

When I finish a book, I tie up the loose ends; I work towards the happy ending, or tragic ending; whatever ending I’m looking for. For the first time, I left a book open ended.

I wasn’t sure why I chose to do this, especially seeing as the way I ended it may mean that nobody will want to publish it, but it was an ending that felt right. I didn’t say whether the world ended, or whether good defeated evil, because that wasn’t what the story was about.

What it was about was humans, and emotions, and the psychology of people, and how that tied in to the element/star sign that they were born under.

I think the underlying theme of all the books I write is: what does it mean to be human? In CONSEQUENCE, the theme was explored in terms of the definition of human. Persephone was SPOILER ALERT a robot, yet she was more human than a lot of the human characters.

In the book I finished last night, the theme was more about humanity; about the strengths and weaknesses of people. And also about the fine line between ordinary and extraordinary. These were people with magical powers, yet they were ordinary people in the deepest sense.

But the strangest thing about this ending was how easy it was to let it go. It’s been months since I finished the first draft of TRANSCEND, yet the characters from the trilogy aren’t quite gone from my head. The slightest thing can trigger their presence in my mind; can make them share their opinions.

Yet the characters from my last book are already gone. They weren’t in my head that much at all; perhaps that was why they were so quick to leave. Either way, it’s strange to have no characters in my mind. It’s also strange not knowing what to write next. All I know is….book number eight, here I come!

A Movie/Song Quote, A Bunch Of Book Stuff, And Talking About Characters.

In the movie Music and Lyrics, there’s a line in a song which goes: ‘I need inspiration, not just another negotiation.’ That line describes how I often feel about my writing.

I end up at this stage of my book where I can’t go on; where I’m only writing out of obligation to the effort I’ve already put, rather than because I want to write.

In the last blog I wrote, I mentioned that I was trying to add to a book that I never finished. I have now written 45,600 and something words of that book.

At first I was typing stuff I’d already written, and then one day…the pages ran out. There was no more. But I continued, and so did the book.

I’m now at a stage where I have the rest of my storylines planned out. This is my least favourite stage of a book. What’s the point of writing when you know exactly what’s going to happen? Where’s the originality, the intrigue?

And with this book, there is another issue: the characters don’t seem to enjoy hanging out in my head.

With my trilogy, the characters were always in my head. The never left: at all. In fact, their most vocal times where either in the early hours of the morning, or when they disagreed with something someone said.

Those characters gave me storylines, and they kept me company. They also told me what to wear, what music to listen to, and that hot chocolate was better than coffee. My current characters don’t give me storylines, they don’t even object when I plot their deaths.

The most I get from my current characters is that they let me play out scenes in my head. But they never tell me how the book should go.

And my other characters are finally gone…for the most part. Except earlier, when I was watching some video of an Estonian dude, and Phoenix was in my head, being all Phoenixish and imitating him. (There are at least two scenes in CONSEQUENCE where Phoenix does an impression of someone, and they have an Estonian accent, she wanted to make sure she was doing it right).

I didn’t realize just how much I missed her until she was back. I remember the day after my mum read CONSEQUENCE for the first time, and she said; ‘Phoenix is basically you’. My initial reaction was one of horror. Phoenix was NOT me, she was this annoying character who couldn’t keep her mouth shut, and judged people, and made loads of mistakes.

In all honesty, I knew that Phoenix was like me from the moment I started writing chapter three. She wasn’t meant to be like me, but she ended up that way. And for a long time I pretended she wasn’t like me, even though she was.

In my current book, there aren’t any characters that are like me. The only things I have in common with my main character are that we are the same height, and we hate turnips. In fact, I’m sure half the idea for the book came from me staring at a turnip thinking how much I hated them. They just sit there, all pretentious, like: ‘Your mum’s going to put me in soup and you’re going to think I’m a potato, so you’ll eat me. Then you’ll realize I’m not a potato, but it will be too late by then. Ha!’ Seriously, those turnips are evil!

One of the things I do like about my book, though, is that when I’m writing it, I’m not myself. I go into the mind of Sage (my main character), and I stop sounding like me, I stop being like me, and I completely become her.

With characters like Phoenix, or the Tsar, and even Persephone, to some extent, there’s not a lot of differentiation between self and character. Phoenix is a lot like me, the Tsar is a lot like Phoenix and me, and Persephone tends to be around one or the other of them, so she’s almost reacting to me. There’s not so much…freedom.

I always say that I don’t “write what I know”, but in some ways, I guess I do. If my characters have aspects of myself (which most of the ones in CONSEQUENCE do), then I am technically writing what I know.

Except, I like to think that I am smarter than Phoenix. She may be a scientist, but she makes a hell of a lot of mistakes.

Hang on a sec; I just realized that Phoenix doesn’t believe in God. Technically, to her, I am God, because I am her creator. A figment of my imagination doesn’t believe in me? What?!

How did I write so much about Phoenix in this blog? It wasn’t meant to be about her…ugh, that girl/figment of my imagination is so manipulative!

It’s amazing how a few minutes of thinking about Phoenix can make me appreciate my current main character, who is now in my thoughts, which means I’m going to start talking about her.

So…my main character is called Sage, she’s sixteen years old, and she has a magical power that involves the element of fire. She’s really tall, like, me tall, so about 5’10”. And she’s the first character I’ve written in the first person that actually has a strong character presence. A lot of characters don’t have much personality when I write in the first person, but Sage does. And she hates turnips; I like it when my characters and I have something in common.

Sage looks a little bit like this:

Unfinished Books Which May One Day Be Finished.

Last night, I was sorting through one of the draws in my bedside table. This draw is generally a writing rubbish bin. It’s filled with old research notes, books I never finished, that kind of thing…

When I finished writing TRANSCEND, I started writing another book the next day. It was completely different from The Three Stages trilogy. For a start, it was straight-out fantasy, not science-fantasy. And it was in the first person. To this day, I have never finished a book written in the first person. I just can’t do it.

But I started reading through this book. And when I put it down at practically two o’clock in the morning, I wanted to know what happened next. But nothing happened next, cos I hadn’t finished it. And so I’ve decided to try to finish it.

Once I quit a book, I generally don’t bother with it again. But there’s something about this book that makes me want to write more.

The One Year Anniversary of When I Started Writing Consequence.

On this day, last year, I started writing a book.

I had no idea where the story was going. I had two characters, two settings, and a few basic storylines ideas.

I had gotten the idea the previous night, and started writing it in the first person. I failed after three or four pages.

So I started again that morning, though it was slightly different.

My original Persephone was tall with dark hair and green eyes. She was very different in personality from my actual Persephone, too.

Then I was talking to my sister about fictional characters, and she said that all female main characters these days tend to have brown hair.

So I changed how Persephone looked. She shifted in my mind, and starting looking like the actress Molly Quinn. (So red hair, blue eyes, blah blah blah)

And with the change of look, Persephone somehow changed personality. I’m not sure why, but it’s a good job that she did. Because my original Persephone would not have been stupid enough to do half the things my actual Persephone does ~ therefore, I wouldn’t have a story.

And I had another character. I was never that keen on the name Hades, so I knew right from the beginning that I would change his name to Haden. I knew how he would look right from the beginning. But I wasn’t quite sure what his personality would be.

I had Haden and Persephone, all I needed was a setting, a place for them to meet.

The vineyard had already came into mind the previous night, and I remembered something I’d heard somewhere about in China people only being allowed one child (I’m not sure if this is actually true, I just heard it on the radio or something). Obviously in China, they wouldn’t send kids to vineyards, but that was where I got the idea for the vineyard scheme.

So I had Persephone, who lived on a vineyard in Greece, and I had Haden, who I had no idea where he was from.

I’ve always had a fascination with Russia. (Not just cos my mum said on many occasions that it was a country she never wanted to go to.) And I decided that Moscow would be the “Underworld” that Persephone was taken to.

And in the original myth, the reason Persephone stays in the Underworld, is because she eats a pomegranate, and when you eat in the Underworld, you can never properly leave. That’s where the sci-fi element came in. I needed a way for fruit to control her.

Originally, it was going to be a retelling of the myth, rather than parallels between Persephone’s story and the myth, but most of my original ideas changed.

Here are some prime examples of things that were meant to happen that I thought better of:

Persephone was going to get together with Sol.

The Tsar was going to be gay.

Phoenix was meant to be a minor character. (Yeah, she’s in my head right now, laughing at me.)

Phoenix was meant to be a nice happy person without a past.

Phoenix’s only purpose was to be a friend for Persephone.

Persephone was meant to stay with the Tsar.

Phoenix was meant to die. (She put an end to this quickly. She never lets me kill her. Believe me; I have tried so many times.)

Melinoe wasn’t going to exist.

Melinoe was going to have a brother.

The reason Phoenix went to the settlements (the time she set them on fire) was because she had a boyfriend there that she wanted to check up on.

Phoenix wasn’t meant to be the settlement president’s daughter.

Persephone and Drew weren’t meant to SPOILER ALERT die.

So that would have been a very…different book. (And if you look carefully, you can see hints of storylines that never happened. I.e. when the Tsar’s talking to his father in the library, some of the things he says. Or how he reacts the first time Persephone kisses him. Or with Sol catching Persephone when she jumps out the window)

But my characters didn’t want it that way; they wanted me to write their stories, so I did.

I think the book started changing when I got my next two characters.

They popped into my head either the day I started writing, or the day after.

There was a boy. He was tall, with dark hair. He looked like a younger version of the guy who played Tom Riddle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. This boy was Sol.

And there was a girl. She was short, with dark hair and blue-green eyes. She looked a lot like the actress Isabelle Fuhrman, but with a different hairstyle, and a different eye colour.

This was the character that changed the book.

The character that won’t leave my head, even after a year.

This character was Phoenix (who is trying to control what I’m writing, yet again).

Phoenix was so different from any character I’d written prior to that point.

She was so…energetic. She was practically bouncing off the walls in my head. She was so full of life, so…real.

That’s what I love/hate about her: that realness. Phoenix is the one character who always manages to get the storylines she wants. She gets the dramatic ones, the horrible disturbing ones. And she gets the occasional happy one, too.

When I combined Phoenix and Persephone, I didn’t realize that those characters would form such a strong bond.

When I was writing CONSEQUENCE, I didn’t realize quite what it was about. I once decided that when I’d finished it, I’d write a book about friendship. Not about good friendship, but about why the hell do people stay friends even when one person doesn’t communicate, when one person isn’t being an ideal friend.

I didn’t realize then that I had actually done that. Because CONSEQUENCE is about friendship. And love, and science, and loss. It’s about so much more than I ever thought it would be.

Before I wrote CONSEQUENCE, I was really miserable. And I think that perhaps that book cured me. It worked as a kind of therapy. And I think I learned a lot from my characters. Yes, the voices in my head/figments of my imagination actually taught me a lot about life.

And they still do, I guess. Though in the book I’m currently working on, there seem to be a few parallels with real life. I guess my subconscious mind likes to slip things into my books that aren’t actually meant to be there. I guess my subconscious mind has a lot in common with Phoenix.

Kai (and Phoenix), Perfect Characters and Imperfect Characters (Kai Being Perfect, Phoenix Being Imperfect.)

Out of all the male characters I have written, I have two favourites.

One is the Tsar. I didn’t understand him as a character until I was writing TRANSCEND. I couldn’t find out what motivated him, what made him who he was.

And the other character is Kai.

Most of the characters in CONSEQUENCE came into my head pretty early on. Kai wasn’t one of those characters.

He didn’t form straight away, but a little bit at a time. It was last summer when Kai came into my mind. I was writing CONSEQUENCE, and I had just gotten the idea for the Estonian Institute of Scientific Research (or EISR, as it’s mostly known as in the books). I knew that Phoenix would spend quite a bit of time there without Persephone, and I knew that she would need someone to keep her company.

A few ideas for characters ran through my mind, but none of them seemed…right. At least, not for Phoenix. She is the kind of character who is very picky about whom she’s friends with. And she is also the kind of character who will not hesitate to tell me that I’m writing the book wrong (or finding the wrong cover, using the wrong words, describing her the wrong way, making her react the wrong way, blah blah blah).

But Kai was perfect for Phoenix. They had stuff in common, but they were almost completely opposite.

Kai was almost perfect, and Phoenix…well, she was not perfect. She was so opinionated, and eccentric, and ALWAYS had to be right. (Oh wait, I think I just described myself…)

And Kai was like an antidote to that. He was calm and loving and peaceful. He was the kind of person who loved everybody equally. And Phoenix was the kind of person who loved a couple of people, and would be absolutely fine if everyone else in the world just disappeared.

And somehow, Kai (SPOILER ALERT!) loved Phoenix. Perhaps because she was so different from him. Or maybe because he admired her. (Phoenix tells me that she has lots of admirable qualities. She also tells me that I can’t contradict her on that, because she is always right).

Or maybe Kai didn’t have a choice…When Phoenix loves someone; she loves them with her whole self. They become her entire world. If someone was met with the full force of her love, it would be hard for them not to return that love.

Plus, Phoenix likes to get her own way. (Like, this blog was meant to be about Kai, yet, somehow, Phoenix seems to be mentioned almost as often as he is.) So if she wanted Kai to love her, he would.

Anyway, what was I saying before Phoenix hijacked my brain?

Oh yes, I was talking about Kai.

Out of my two favourite male characters, I think Kai is my actual favourite. Though sometimes I’m like “is he realistic? Is he too nice?”

In the book I’m currently writing, my main male character is not perfect. He is very far from perfect. This proves how far along my writing has come within the last year.

In CONSEQUENCE, I had three main(ish) male characters. The Tsar, who was kind of evil. Drew, who was near perfect. And Kai, who was even closer to perfect than Drew was.

The only flaw I could find in Kai was that he dated Abynechka just to make Phoenix jealous. Abynechka is actually named after a girl called Abi who was mean to me once, so I never liked her character very much. Neither did Phoenix, though that was obviously for different reasons. Jealous is an understatement of what Phoenix felt. There is a scene in AMEND which shows that Phoenix was still mad about it, even after about thirteen years.

I sometimes wonder if it’s fair that my male characters have hardly any flaws, yet my female characters have hundreds. But recently I’ve been thinking, if people can’t be perfect in books, when can they be?

Would people read a book if male characters were uncommunicative flirtaholic idiots who were too busy looking at themselves in the mirror to notice that one of the female characters had been looking at them for the past half hour?

I wouldn’t read a book like that.

Though I did realize ~ to my horror ~ that the one thing my three favourite male characters of all time had in common was that they all tried to strangle their girlfriends/future girlfriends.

Okay, so two out of three of them had been mind-controlled, and the third one didn’t realize at the time that he would later fall in love with the alien, but still…I was kind of like “If these are fictional guys that are nice…what are the not-nice ones like?”.

The thing I seem to always read about “perfect” characters, is that they’re too unrealistic, too cardboard cut-out ish. But if characters aren’t cardboard cut-out ish, then what’s wrong with them being perfect?

Fictional characters aren’t meant to be an exact replica of real people. They have to be themselves, and if they are meant to be really abnormally nice, well then that’s who they are.

And some books need characters like that. For example, if Kai didn’t exist, Phoenix would be ten times more annoying than she is when is being as annoying as it’s possible to be. (She isn’t always as annoying in the books as I say she is, but remember, I’ve had her in my head for nearly a year, so I know just how annoying she can be).

The relationship between Phoenix and Kai is one of my favourite things to write. It’s just interesting how love can change Phoenix; make her a better person (and sometimes a worse one). It’s very different from her love for Persephone, too. With Persephone, Phoenix loves her so much, but she doesn’t trust her completely. The ultimate level of Phoenix’s trust is when she trusts someone with herself.

Therefore, she trusts Kai more than Persephone. Even though she doesn’t like to talk to Kai about her friendship with Persephone ~ which implies that she doesn’t trust him quite as much as it appears. God, that girl is complicated!

In AMEND, Phoenix and Kai are married. They’ve been together for about thirteen years. And it’s really lovely to write ~ even though Phoenix is still insecure, which sometimes makes their relationship insecure.

But it’s also interesting to write just in terms of character development. I know about characters who develop on their own, but what about ones who develop together? It’s nice to see how Phoenix is when she has someone to depend on, someone who loves her for herself (despite her many, many flaws). She’s such a complex character, and being in love gives her a kind of simplicity.

The love between Phoenix and Kai is perhaps the strongest love in the whole trilogy. Yes, Persephone and Drew would die for each other. But Phoenix and Kai would live for each other. If Kai died, Phoenix wouldn’t kill herself. She would probably die of a broken heart, but she wouldn’t choose to die.

She loves Kai enough to know that he would want her to live.

And if it was the other way round, Kai would do the same.

There were several times in TRANSCEND where I was tempted to kill Phoenix. She was being particularly annoying, and I was getting rather sick of her. I’m glad that I didn’t kill her (not just cos she would be unbearable to have in my head).

But if I had killed Phoenix, what would have happened to Kai? Well, basically he wouldn’t be too great to have in my head, either (though he’s one of those lovely characters who has the decency to let me write what I want, rather than what they want).

And if I’d killed either of them, I would have lost one of my favourite storylines. So, I saw sense, and just fatally injured Phoenix. I think she’s almost forgiven me.

Another thing about my two favourite male characters: out of all the male characters, they are the ones that Phoenix has the strongest reaction to. Whether it’s extreme hatred towards the Tsar, or extreme love for Kai, those are two of the characters that she feels the most for.

Thoughts On Characters And Bravery.

In the books I read, having brave main characters is kind of a given. Most of my favourite books are futuristic/post-apocalyptic/dystopian. They contain these horrible worlds full of horrible things that the main characters try to overcome.

I never thought about my characters being brave. I knew that some of them were, but I never realized that almost all of them were.

By “brave” I don’t just mean risking their lives. I mean brave in so many different contexts. In who they are, in how they are, in what they believe in.

In Divergent (one of my all-time favourite books) there’s a line which goes “I never thought I would need bravery in the small moments of my life; I do”.  And I started thinking about that, and realized that it actually applies to a lot of fictional characters.

I always thought that if I lived in the worlds of the books I write ~ or the books I read ~ that I would be brave.

Three nights ago, I was standing on a chair, screaming; completely at the mercy of a dead mouse. I hate mice.

And thinking about it like that, I realized just how brave my characters are.

If someone even mentions the word “rat”, I start freaking out, yet my characters face things they fear on a daily basis. And they stay sane (sort of).

I spend so much time criticizing my characters, that I often forget to admire them.

There are characters like Persephone, who are brave because they would turn the world upside down for someone they love, or for something they believe in.

But there are characters that are brave in other ways. There’s Kai, who is brave enough to love Phoenix (that takes bravery, believe me).

And there’s Melinoe, the main character in AMEND.  When I was writing it, I never considered her to be brave. She was so cold, so sadistic/masochistic/horrible. But she is brave.

She went through so much, and she was mostly alone. Yes, that may have been because she alienated most of the people who cared for her, but that doesn’t make it easier.

Melinoe’s bravery came mostly in the last couple of paragraphs of the last chapter of AMEND. She lets her guard down, and perhaps that’s the bravest action of all.

The Fear Of The Blank Page.

I’ve always found it hard to start writing things.

With each book I write, it gets easier, but I still feel incompetent when it comes to beginning things. I can end books just fine. Endings are good, they’re dramatic, they’re important. But beginnings? Holy crap, they’re hard to write. You have to set the scene, you have to interest people. Oh, and when you begin something, you have no idea how it’s going to turn out.

Today, I had to write a description for the back of AMEND. I can not describe my books in one paragraph.

I can write books easily enough, but I can’t describe them.

And so I sat at the computer, staring at the blankness on the screen, trying to figure out how to describe 52, 700 and something words in just a paragraph.

And just when I thought I was done, I had to write a paragraph or so about myself.

You’d think I’d know myself pretty well, seeing as I’ve spent the last fifteen years being myself. But it turns out; describing myself is ten times worse than describing my book.

I mean, how do you sum up a whole person in a few words? And how do you know you’re not writing about who you want to be, rather than who you are?

So for the second time today, I found myself staring at a blank page.

I’m fascinated by words and letters and writing. When I write, I form the letters without thinking. When I type, my fingers find the keys without looking.

For about half my life, I have been able to create words by putting letters together. And it’s completely subconscious. It’s a miracle really, that words just form.

But when the words don’t come…then I can’t write without thinking.

And the truth is, I’m scared of the blank page. I hate that I can’t find words to fill it up.

Yesterday, I was working on the third draft of TRANSCEND. Most of what I was doing was trying to add some emotion to it. In the kind of books I write, there has to be emotion. I write horrible storylines, and the characters have to react to that.

But sometimes, I just can’t find the words. And the page wasn’t even blank. It was filled with the little black symbols that form together to make our language. It was completely filled with words, and I was still unable to write.

When I wrote the first draft of TRANSCEND, I felt like I had forgotten how to write. I was so sick of that book, and I just wanted it to be finished. So I hurried it, and it was pretty crap. The feeling of not being able to write…let’s just say it’s not a good thing for writers to feel.

I express myself through my books, so if I can’t write, then I can’t express myself.

On the 1^st of February, I started writing another book.

It’s set in the same world as The Three Stages trilogy, but set it’s about fifteen years after the end of TRANSCEND.

My current plans are to have a trilogy of trilogies. So nine books all set in the same world.

The book I am currently writing feels very different from The Three Stages trilogy. For a start, I don’t have a lot of main characters; I have a lot of secondary main characters, and then one main one. Her name’s Yanne, and she is a very interesting character to write. Why? Because she doesn’t tell lies. Ever.

I have never read a book where the main character doesn’t lie at least a few times. I now see why. It is really hard to write, cos you have to think about every single word that character says.

When I started writing this book, I was going to have three main characters. Then I realized that I didn’t really like one of them, and one of them was kind of boring. So now I just have Yanne.

But the first few chapters will have to be changed, because they’re from the perspective of other characters. So I have to rewrite the beginning, and face the blank page yet again.

Epilogue-y Stuff.

Last night (or ~ more accurately ~ in the very early hours of this morning) I wrote the epilogue of AMEND.

Originally, it was the one book in the trilogy that was without an epilogue. I didn’t have any particular reason for this, other than the fact that less than 24 hours pass by between the end of AMEND and the beginning of TRANSCEND.

 I tend to use the epilogue as a place for characters to reflect. Reflection needs time to pass; otherwise it’s not quite reflective enough.

I had just finished fixing up the edits for the third draft of AMEND, when I realized the book didn’t feel quite…finished.

And so I thought why not write an epilogue? If it sucks, it can be removed. If it doesn’t, I’ve got a slightly longer book. It took me between half an hour and forty-five minutes to write it.

If it had been from the perspective of any other character, it wouldn’t have taken so long to write.

Although my books are written in the third person, I write the epilogue in the first person. That way, at the end of the book, you can really get into the character’s mind, see what they’re thinking and feeling.

In CONSEQUENCE, the epilogue was in the first person of Phoenix. 

Writing it was incredibly easy, because it was easy to get into her head. Out of all my characters, Phoenix is the one who’s most like me. That makes her the easiest to write, but also the one that annoys me most, because she has a lot of aspects of me that I don’t like.

My main character in AMEND is called Melinoe. She is horrible. I hated her for most of the book, until I realized that it was actually quite fun writing a character like her. I could push the boundaries of what a character could do or say, I wanted to see how far she had to go before people hated her.

In CONSEQUENCE, I had two main characters. For reasons to do with the last chapter, I couldn’t use Persephone for the epilogue, so I used Phoenix.

But in AMEND; although I have another sort-of-main character, Melinoe is the main one. So the epilogue had to be from her perspective. I didn’t realize how hard this was until I started writing it.

Most characters evolve over the course of a book, but Melinoe didn’t evolve very much.

She had learnt a few life lessons, but she was still Melinoe.

I don’t think anything could change her, because she’s very…confined to a certain way of thinking and being.

Yet I had to get into her mind ~ which, by the way, isn’t always that great a place to be.

When I was done, I was happy with what I had written.

But I think that in the process of writing the epilogue, I was trying so hard to write it, that I didn’t realize that I shouldn’t be writing it ~ Melinoe should. 

Every so often I would find a sentence that was completely Melinoe, and those were the sentences I kept. I removed everything that sounded too like me, and I made it all her.