Tag Archives: Creating Characters

Ginny Gives Us the Skinny – Riverton Road Monday

Great Read, Kindle Bargain, Storytelling, ,

Interview with Ginny Simmons at Ginny’s Coffee Corner in Riverton NY

Go Confidently Mug on DeskCurious Questioner: Excuse me, Ginny. I understand you own this place. Could we possibly sit down for a minute and talk?

Ginny Simmons: We can talk, honey. But I hardly ever sit down. Why don’t you just try to keep up while I take care of my paying customers?

CQ (Hurrying after Ginny between pink and white booths as she refills mugs from the carafe in her hand.): What’s it like to be a woman running a business in a town like Riverton?

GS: Good morning darlin. (Ginny bends over a table while the man she’s greeted with a smile and a wink stares as if in a trance at her ample cleavage.)You just let me know if there’s anything else you need.

CQ (Still shadowing Ginny as she leaves that table and steps back to survey the room with booths along one side and a counter along the other.): Do you always flirt with your customers like that?

GS: Honey, you asked me what it’s like to be a woman doing business in this town. My business is hospitality and most of the people who come in here in the morning are men on their way to a long day of working hard. My job is to put a little lift in their step and a big smile on their faces.

CQ: And they know there’s nothing more to it than that?

GS (Turning with a hand on her hip toward CQ): Well, honey. If they don’t, they aren’t old enough or smart enough to be drinking anything with caffeine in it.

CQ: I’ve heard you know a man named Gus Kalli. Is he old enough and smart enough?

GS (Starts to walk away then doesn’t.) Gus Kalli is more than enough of just about everything. But most of all he’s more than enough of a man to take care of his family. Those four handsome hunks of son he has couldn’t have a better father than Gus. He’s been known to take in strays too, kids and even adults who need the kind of family that gives a hoot what happens to you. His wife Angela’s a good sort too. If she wasn’t, I might take a run at Gus myself. But she is, so I won’t. You can quote me on that.

CQ: It’s my understanding that the Kalli’s have been in the middle of serious trouble more than once. The kind of trouble that has go do with murder. What do you think about that?

GS: Well there, honey. It seems to me you shouldn’t talk about understanding much of anything if you don’t know life’s got trouble in it for everybody, here in Riverton and everyplace else in this world. You’ve just got to have what it takes to stand up on your hind legs and take care of business. The way the Kalli’s always do and the way I’m going to do right now.

GS flashes a smile and a wink before leaving CQ behind and moving on to the two gentlemen in the next booth): Good morning sweethearts. What can I do for you today?

RR

 A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 is available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZBOTH5O, This is Alice’s 13th novel. Stop on over for a cuppa at Ginny’s Coffee Corner and a good read too. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Win a mug like the one in the picture above by sending an email to aliceorrbooks@gmail.com that says “I want to have a cuppa with Alice.”

 

Daughters and Their Mothers – Riverton Road Monday

Great Read, Kindle Bargain, Romantic Suspense, ,

Mother-Daughter Split imageA Year of Summer Shadows is the second story in my current romantic suspense novel series and it is a hotbed of daughter-mother contention. As follows.

I’m Hailey. My mother is Annemarie Lambert and she’s a stranger to me. I was my father’s girl until he died and left me to watch my mother falter and stumble in a daze from one foolish choice to the next.

Too many of those bad choices involved men. A string of them – each more useless than the last. We live in a small town called Riverton. Everybody saw my mother’s behavior and gossiped about her in hushed tones. I heard them anyway and felt ashamed.

She still lives in our old house on Academy Avenue which has deteriorated along with my mother since Dad died. I go there as little as possible and try to live my life in an upstanding and responsible way so I may never be mistaken for Annemarie.

I’m Julia. My mother is Virginia Hargate and I wish I could get free of her. She’s loomed over me for as long as I can remember and dictates every moment of my life according to what she thinks I should be. She even took my best friend Hailey from me when I most needed her.

My father was an important man in Riverton but he was a busy man too and hardly ever anywhere but his office. So I rattled around alone in our huge house on Blakely Street doing my best to keep out of range of the sound of Virginia’s harping voice.

She wants more than anything for me to be a lady the way she sees herself to be. Admired and envied. Perfect in every way. Her desire for that has given me my revenge. I’ve made myself into the opposite of a lady. I’m neither admired nor envied. I am Virginia’s shame.

I am Angela Kalli. I have four sons but no daughter. I made a special room in our house at on Riverton Road – yellow and pale blue and empty except for the occasional guest. I go there when my husband Gus is away and daydream about the little girl who might have grown up here.

These are the daughters and mothers of A Year of Summer Shadows at the beginning of my story. Will they be changed at the end? We will simply have to read and see.

 RR

 A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – Mark & Hailey’s Story. Launched with summer on June 22nd at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is my 13th novel. I am its mother and it is my daughter. We had a contentious relationship but now we’ve reconciled. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

 

Plots Thicken in Mom’s Kitchen – Riverton Road Monday

Great Read, Kindle Bargain, Writing Tips,

Bad Mom imageMaybe this is a backhanded way to celebrate post-Mother’s Day. But I can’t help pointing out what great story complications can grow from the seeds of mother-child relationships.

In my workshops on writing mystery and suspense I often mention that there’d be far fewer fictional serial killers if it weren’t for fictional mothers screwing up their sons. Not at all fair to real life mom’s but we’re talking about make believe mom’s.

My favorite example is the super crazy and super delusional villain of Thomas Harris’s The Red Dragon. I don’t believe a writer must provide readers with a reason to like or even sympathize with an evil character. I do believe the writer must give us a way to understand the character.

A brief flashback scene does exactly that in The Red Dragon. A scene in a pantry between then young Francis Dolarhyde and his mother. The details are too gruesome to recount here. I will say that after reading this scene we recognize the genesis of the monster adult Francis to come.

The mothers in my Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series are nothing like the Red Dragon mom. But they generate story complications anyway. That’s the role of secondary characters. To complicate plot and add more obstacles the main characters must climb over to succeed.

In the first book of my series A Wrong Way Home the heroine Kara’s mother is no longer around. Still she remains a stumbling block from the past that intensifies Kara’s struggle to come to grips with the present.

The hero Matt’s mother Angela is a continuing character. She’s the matriarch of the Kalli family at the center of the series. I want readers to be drawn to her and empathize with her. But if she’s totally likable she won’t work for the story in terms of causing conflict for other characters.

Angela is a strong woman – mostly in ways we admire and her son loves her dearly. On the other hand – in a past incident he knows nothing about – Angela overstepped a boundary she should have respected. Matt and Kara are now paying the price of his mother’s intrusiveness.

BUT – the story is stronger because of it. More conflicted. More complicated. Creating more trouble for the characters we care most about. Thank heaven for conflict/complication/struggle producing mama’s.  (Find A Wrong Way Home at www.amazon.com/author/aliceorr.)

And wait until you see the plot twists two of these mothers come up with in Book 2.

RR

 A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – Mark & Hailey’s Story. Launches with summer on June 22nd at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is my 13th novel and there are moms thickening the plot for sure. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com