Paranormal Romance Blog

Think authors know EVERYTHING about their characters? Michele Hauf was recently stumped by a question about hero in her story Vampire’s Tango, on sale now from Silhouette Nocturne Bites. Find out how AND get some cool scoop on both Vampire’s Tango and Michele’s first HQN vampire romance novel Her Vampire Husband in audio in Michele’s guest post!

by Michele Hauf, author of Vampire’s Tango (Silhouette Nocturne Bites, March 2010)

Writers create people.  Isn’t that cool?  To have a job where you can sit down, let your imagination soar, and design a whole person.  You can name him, dress him up, make him move and interact with others.  You can even have conversations with your creation.  (Fortunately, I have yet to chat with my characters out loud, so I’m still safe from the escape-proof jacket with the sleeves that buckle in the back.)  We create entire worlds for these characters that we, inevitably, fall in love with.

But just because we created this hero or heroine doesn’t mean we know EVERYTHING about them.  I’m still not sure if my characters EVER go to the bathroom.  Or brush their teeth.  Hmm, wait—yes, I did let a character brush his teeth once.  I know things like what their mother called them when they were kids, and how long it takes to piss them off.  Their favorite colors, cars and music are a given.  I do a sort of character study with each new story.  It starts with a picture, usually of an actor or actress.  I need that visual reference.  In my mind, I might change hair color, eye color, etc., but I like to have a face looking at me from the computer screen as I write a story.  Then I assign a place, a profession (in my case, a creature type), and quirks, habits, etc.  I go deeper then, by getting into the character’s head and trying to figure out what they want in life, what they feel they’ve been denied, and what they need to finally make the world all sparkly and rainbows to them.

Even though I’m master and creator of these people, I don’t always get it right.  And sometimes, I know them less than I think I do.  I recently got a phone call from the woman who is narrating Her Vampire Husband (available in audio version from Audible.com in April).  She had just finished narrating HVH, and was going to also narrate Vampire’s Tango, which featured Alexandre Renard, a secondary character from HVH.  Thing is, she was worried because she’d given Alexandre a French accent in HVH, yet in Vampire’s Tango, even though it’s set in Paris, I state that Alexandre was visiting from his home in Minnesota.  And later I mention he’d grown up in California during the gold rush.  Hmm…  The narrator wanted to know: Was he French or other?

I didn’t know.  I love a French guy; lots of my characters are French.  But I honestly didn’t know about Alexandre.  So with fast thinking I said ‘He moved to CA from France.’  Crossed my fingers, and hoped she buy it.  She was relieved she had done his accent correctly.  I was just glad for the excuse, and now I’m still not sure if the guy is French or American, or maybe he’s a mix of both.  Who is this dude?  I guess we don’t always have to know all the facts.  And sometimes we can even leave it to the reader to fill in the blanks.

I hope you’ll check out Alexandre’s expert tango skills that attract his enemy into his arms.  She doesn’t care what his nationality is, only that he’s tall, dark and kisses like a dream.  If you like audio books, I’ve been told Vampire’s Tango is going to be a free extra attached to the audio version of Her Vampire Husband.

Michele