First Word

Once more up till all hours of the night unable to sleep with my mind going 100 mph. I guess I will have to eliminate all caffeine in the afternoons again. I only had an iced tea, but that was enough to keep my brain working late. Well, not one to wile away a good night with the moon, I got to thinking about classic love affairs in literature and film. The ones we can never forget. Some of the best love affairs are quite chaste. The characters longing for each other, but kept apart by various barriers either self-made or just in the way. Isn't that part of a classic love affair ... the longing and want? If it were blissful without drama, we as the audience would have no vested interest to keep reading or watching as the case may be. Here are some good ones: Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice -- there's was one of misunderstanding and inadvertent offense which kept them separated. I've read the book and seen the multiple films of this classic tale writ...

When you fall in love with a fictional character, they become your friend. I have been thinking about this since my character Brea in California Girl Chronicles now gets talked about like she's a real person. I had a "fan" start to argue with me about her the other day. I actually dropped the argument. It was silly. She's not an actual person, and I know what motivates her better than anyone else. When readers are this invested in a character then the author has done his or her job and created a well-developed character people love to love. I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite fictional characters both on screen and on paper and why. Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie) -- you're perhaps puzzled about a choice from juvenile fiction. Laura was, of course, a real person but her prairie stories were mostly fictional accounts of her young life on the Great Plains as a pioneer girl. I fell in love with her when I was 10 years old. I ...