8 weeks till To LoveLife – Meet Elaine

I know last time I said it was 6 weeks till LoveLife came out. Guess what?  I’m bad at math.  Sorry! No one’s more bummed about the extra wait than me.  I am going crazy waiting for this book to hit the shelves.  Sadly, I can’t speed up the process, but I can introduce you to Elaine.

Elaine’s looks were easy for me. I had them picked out before I met the character. I found her in the Eddie Bauer catalog and started cutting out pictures of her for a character board months before I started LoveLife. She’s classy and very nordic with long, wavy blonde hair. She’s elegantly lean with long, graceful limbs and a slow smile. She could appear comfortable on a yoga mat or in a tailored business suit. Best of all, she’s got these pale blue eyes that stop you in your tracks. It was really her eyes that slayed me. Sound like anyone who’s been mentioned on this blog a time or two? Yeah, Susie pointed out writing the Eddie Bauer girl will sound very much like I was writing Diane, but what could I do? Elaine is who she is, and in some ways it felt fitting she and Diane had something in common even before I met them.

Personality wise, Elaine is a classic femme in that she really strung me along beautifully. She never fully revealed herself, but always allowed me to tease out the information I needed the minute I needed it. From my earliest meeting with Diane, I knew this character would be a life coach, and a very dedicated one at that (because if the life coach isn’t really serious about her job she’s got no reason not to jump right into bed with Joey). Making her introverted, reflective, and cautious made her a good foil to Joey’s emotive, reactionary, boiness and also fit the life coach model I was working with. I mean the only life coach I knew was all of those things, so just of course that was my model.

She even came with a theme song that stayed with her all the way through.  ”Wonder” by Natalie Merchant.

All done, right? Wrong.

Looks like Diane, acts like Diane, same job as Diane, anyone see a problem with this?  Elaine deserved to be her own person with the same depth and originality as Joey. And what’s more, a characters’ looks, job, and basic personality aren’t really their essence. The heart of a character is her central conflict.

I drove home from Buffalo fixated on Elaine, wondering what drove her, what events had shaped her, what held her back (why was such an awesome woman still single?) and how would falling in love with Joey transform her? While pondering the great mysteries of her life and listening to RENT (as one does while pondering great mysteries), I heard this great bit of song dialogue.

Roger: Mark has got his work, they say “Mark lives for his work” and “Mark’s in love with his work.” Mark hides in his work
Mark: From what?
Roger:From facing your failure, facing your loneliness facing the fact you live a lie. Yes, you live a lie. Tell you why
you’re always preaching not to be numb when that’s how you thrive. You pretend to create and observe when you really detach from feeling alive.
Mark: Perhaps it’s because I’m the one of us to survive.

In my mind “Mark” got replaced by “Elaine” and some how it fit. I couldn’t see a master plan. As I mentioned my femmes keep me on a strictly need-to-know basis, but “You’re always preaching not to be numb when that’s how you thrive. You pretend to create and observe when you really detach from feeling alive,” was bold enough to get me started down the path of thinking this smart, observant, life coach had something so much deeper behind her impeccable professional facade. It told me her job was more than an incidental plot point, and her reserve was more than a surface level trait.  I suspected everything I knew about her was merely a symptom of some greater reason to “detach from feeling alive.” The very things that make her so wonderful would also make up her central conflict.

It wasn’t everything I needed to know but it was more than enough to hook me.  I hope it’s enough to hook you, too.

6 weeks to LoveLife – Meet Joey

In keeping with the theme of counting down to the release of LoveLife, I want to start introducing you to the main characters (and their songs) so that by the time the book comes out, my lovely blog-reading buddies will already know a little bit of the story behind the story.  Today I’m going to give you the inside scoop on Joey Lang.

Joey is the first romantic lead in LoveLife (She’s first because the book opens in her point of view). Joey is a twenty-eight-year-old, blue-collar Buffalo boi. She’s the manager at a funky little coffee shop in Buffalo, where she’s a model employee. She is her parents’ pride and joy and the best friend anyone could ever ask for. She’s athletic, a team player, a good sport, and in very good shape. She’s sweet, strong, caring, and fiercely loyal to the people she loves.  She’s also super cute, with big brown puppy dog eyes and a Justin Beiber hair cut.   The femmes among you will swoon for her. One of my beta readers said she’d give anything to meet Joey in really life. I never had any problem writing Joey, and I’d like to say that’s because she reminds me a lot of myself, but her core strengths and dashing good looks are more like what I wish I could be than what I really am.  Joey is the type of person I’d love to be.

So what’s the catch, you ask?  You know there’s gotta be a catch because a story about the perfect partner is going to be one short book.  And while Joey was always easy to identify with, she wasn’t always a fun point of view to be in. You see, Joey is shy, almost painfully unsure of herself, and not without good reason. She’s had some life circumstances that put our poor boi through the emotional wringer and left her feeling pretty unworthy of a truly special someone, someone like our other lead character, Elaine, the life coach. By the time she meets her dream girl, Joey’s trapped in a life that no longer feels like her own and buried under her insecurities so deeply she can’t even summon up the nerve to approach her.  Now you see the problem starting to form, right?

But shy-girl-lets-dream-girl-get-away isn’t really a very long story either.  Thankfully, Joey has a meddling best friend (Aren’t those the best kind?) who isn’t at all shy and makes Joey a life-coaching appointment.  Joey is supposed to go to the appointment and woo this amazing woman she’s never had the nerve to speak to.  Anybody want to take odds on what happens next?  Does our sweet, beautiful boi suddenly cast off her fears, turn into Prince Charming and sweep Elaine off her feet?  Or does Elaine figure out this young woman is in serious need of life coaching, leaving them both muddled up in a complex web of personal attraction and professional obligation?

Joey is strong and shy, beautiful and broken, choking on fear and starving for something true.  I wrote many of  her scenes to the theme song  ”Hanging By a Moment” by Lifehouse.   I hope when you hear it, you’ll think of her.

“Hanging By A Moment”

Desperate for changing, starving for truth
I’m closer to where I started, I’m chasing after youI’m falling even more in love with you
Letting go of all I’ve held on to
I’m standing here until you make me move
I’m hanging by a moment here with youForgetting all I’m lacking, completely incomplete
I’ll take your invitation, you take all of me nowI’m falling even more in love with you
Letting go of all I’ve held on to
I’m standing here until you make me move
I’m hanging by a moment here with you
I’m living for the only thing I know
I’m running and not quite sure where to go
And I don’t know what I’m diving into
Just hanging by a moment here with youThere’s nothing else to lose, there’s nothing else to find
There’s nothing in the world that can change my mind
There is nothing else
There is nothing else
There is nothing else

Desperate for changing, starving for truth
I’m closer to where I started, I’m chasing after you

I’m falling even more in love with you
Letting go of all I’ve held on to
I’m standing here until you make me move
I’m hanging by a moment here with you
I’m living for the only thing I know
I’m running and not quite sure where to go
And I don’t know what I’m diving into
Just hanging by a moment here with you

Just hanging by a moment
Just hanging by a moment
I’m hanging by a moment
Just hanging by a moment here with you