More Writing and… Brock

It’s 7:10 on a Sunday evening and I’ve written about 4000 words so far for the “real” holiday novella that will go into the box set. That also includes doing some self-editing on the other novella that was originally meant for the box set but will be released on its own next month.

Self-editing involves listening to the story being read via VoiceDream app while I’m washing dishes. Every time I catch a typo, a pause that shouldn’t be there because I may have typed an errant period in between two words, or a mispronunciation, I stop what I’m doing and go to my screen to see what it was and correct it. It makes for a long-assed dishwashing session but I get the typos corrected nonetheless.

The “real” holiday story I’m writing is set in California this time. Closer to home and places I know and love. It has two completely new characters going to one of my favorite places in the world, Nevada City. The hero even looks like this:

That’s because I realized that all my heroes in most of my books look the same – dark haired, blue eyed, good guy types whom one of my author friends described as a “beta” kind of guy versus an “alpa” – and I figured I needed to shake things up.

So I asked myself, what kind of guy have I yet to write about simply because I have never met anyone like him in my life to get an idea what he’d be like on paper? Like, he’d be so surreal I haven’t even daydreamed about him because he’d be like a walking Nordic god and there is nothing that we have in common and therefore there is really nothing I can really write about him as a character.

Then I remembered it’s all make-believe.

And that’s how Brock O’Hurn popped up in my head and that was that.

Guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens. Wish me luck!