Mark was absolutely right! My favorite way to “find” a hero or heroine is to look at genuine documented family histories, fabricate another family member (or several), and then weave those fictional characters into the backdrop provided by related historical events.

My upcoming release, To Ruin a Rake, is largely set in a very real facility, London’s Foundling Hospital, a home for the city’s unwanted children (for more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundling_Hospital). It became the battlefield for Roland and Harriett. The modified family history of one of the Hospital’s founders became Roland’s background, and Harriett’s family history was similarly borrowed from truth and altered to fit fiction.

Today, I am thankful for all the many blessings in my life. The love of my beautiful family and dear friends (whom I consider extended family), being able to come together to celebrate this day, our home, the ability to do what I love for a living, for peace and safety in the place I live, for YOU, and for always having enough–MORE than enough! I may not be rich according to U.S. “standards,” but I am blessed abundantly with everything I need and a good many of my “wants.” For all of these things, I am deeply grateful.

May you and your loved ones, wherever you are, know such abundant blessings. I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving!

I saw this clip this morning and thought, “Wow, this is cool. I need to make sure I write my characters as if actors will be performing them.” In the video, Tom talks about how actors (and, by assumption, readers) connect with a character, and how compassion is the key.  Applied to writing, it means (to me) connecting in the same way and then loading my pages with a character’s root motivation as well as their reactionary emotions so that my reader feels what the character feels and makes a genuine emotional connection based on understanding where that character is coming from.

I always feel my characters as I’m writing them, but then they live IN my head until I get them out in words. My job is to make them come alive in yours. The way he puts it  made some dots connect for me in a new way. Very thought-provoking.

…And it’s Tom Freaking Hiddleston.