These Friends of Mine Introduction

“Is it me?”

People often ask about the inspiration for my characters and what drives their development. They’re often asking because they’ve recognised some facet of their own nature in a fictional person. I knew a lady once who had convinced herself and all her friends that I’d based one of the Hana characters on her. I hadn’t, but she loved the idea and ran with it.

Unless otherwise stated, characters are usually a smorgasbord of personalities arranged in such a way as to be effective to the story. And that’s a lot like life, isn’t it?

“It’s up to us…”

We are all a product of nurturing, experience, and environment. We’re a mixture of strengths and weaknesses which are stitched into the fabric of our nature. It’s up to us which ones we lean on at any given time.

There’s a danger in character creation with drawing too many stereotypes. Murderers do not always come in the shape of the archetypal baddie. That’s why ‘stranger danger’ is often ineffectual when educating our children because the danger can be much closer to home. We waste time on the notion of horned demons with tails and cloven hooves who jump from dark corners and miss the reality of the abuser in a close friend’s home. We have them watching for monsters and don’t equip them for the unexpected battles.

“Good people sometimes do bad stuff…”

If I were to pick a theme for my murder mysteries, it would be this: good people sometimes do bad stuff.

The same is true in real life. A very wise cleric once looked me in the eye and said, “We are all quite capable of breaking every single commandment if given the right climate.”

The thought filled me with terror because it also put me under the spotlight. That’s not somewhere any of us like to be, especially taking into account our own faultiness. If we’re all just one step away from becoming criminals, then what is our tipping point?

I guess that’s something I’ve explored over the years through my writing. For many of my characters, the murderer is someone they know. It’s a family member, a friend, an acquaintance, or the person who lives next door. This is the essence of real-life. We’ve all known that certain ‘someone’. Sometimes reality reads stranger than fiction.

If I look back through my characters with honesty, I have known most of them, though the disclaimer at the front of my books swears otherwise. Because my depiction of them is not of their whole nature. I reserve the right to add and take away from who they are which makes it arguable that they would even know themselves by the time I finished with them.

Clifton Strengths

When I did my Clifton strengths test at the end of last year, I discovered the Developer strength lurking inside my top ten. Apparently, that means I see potential in those I interact with. I want the best for them and will work to achieve it.

Perhaps that’s why my characters are always redeemable. That makes me instantly think of Tama Du Rose. In the early Hana Du Rose novels, I would happily have locked him up in prison and thrown away the key. By the end of the tenth novel, I would have broken him out with my bare hands.

And what of my main female characters? Have I allowed them to change and grow?

I believe so.

Hana is not the same woman by the end of book 10, is she? The pregnant teenager in the yellow dress who cried on a London tube train and first attracted the interest of an adolescent Logan, is a million miles away from the Hana in my head nowadays. In the last book, that Hana defied a police officer and rode a testy horse across country to stop her deaf child thinking she’d abandoned him. The newer Hana has discovered hidden depths, possibly because of her relationship with the badass Logan Du Rose. Loving him has put her in impossible situations. The old Hana couldn’t have survived this far without growing.

“My characters as you’ve never seen them before.”

Over the next few weeks, I’d like to introduce you to some of my characters as you’ve never seen them before. This series of blogs will be called These Friends of Mine.

Hold onto your hats because I’ll start with my newest friend; Katharine Maguire (Kit) from my comedy series, The Curly Fan Club.

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(Secret: there will be discount codes each week for readers wanting to catch up with the character being profiled in their respective series.)

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See you there!