Roving Characters

     I believe most writers are loathe to leave their beloved characters when they finish a book. Even bad ones can be used again if you don't kill them off. Since I write mostly series, I am able to hang on to the main creations for a long time though they may fade into the background somewhat. My former editor always chastised me for wanting to bring too many old characters back to life and sometimes made me take them out despite my argument that my readers wanted to know what the former characters were doing now. Yes, like real people they continue their imaginary lives, have children, take new jobs, retire, have grandchildren.
     I have several single title books that I simply call my Chapelle novels as they all take place in that imaginary town. Trashy Affair deals with a devoted environmentalist who falls for wounded warrior, Merlin Tauzin, who owns with a big ass truck. The funnier episodes were based on my own garbage collection problems. It's one of my personal favorites, but Merlin and Jane were left behind when the book ended. Still, people kept asking about him. I wrote Ashy Affair next, which takes place in the same town, but again I put aside the hunky fireman at the end of the story. Then, along came Putty in her Hands, and I was able to update fans about both the Merlin and the fireman since they all live in the same small town and would know each other. As  Julia attempts to save an old hotel from demolition, she goes before the Parish Council, and we learn Merlin now serves as a councilman who decides to help. Jane, always the conservationist, is on her side too, and so is another escapee from another single title, A Taste of Bayou Water, Jonathan Hartz, billionaire, and his Cajun wife, Celine. At one point, the fireman, now the chief, saves the hotel from burning down.
     Sometimes, my single title characters even intrude in my series titles. Recently, Jon Hartz, has employed Trinity Billodeaux as coder in his company and acts as his mentor. That book, Dream for a Sinner, one of the Sinners series, is in line edits right now. But in the same title, a retired bull rider, Bodey Landrum, makes a break from The Roses series and shows up at a charity rodeo given by the Billodeauxs along with three other Roses characters. Well, why not? Wouldn't Bodey take off from his famous bull riding school to help out in a good cause? And he'd absolutely take the geeky Trinity out to a honky-tonk and help him out in a bar room brawl. No pub date on this one yet, but probably winter sometime.
     Often, people ask me what became of secondary series characters who aren't really suited for a book of their own. A friend recently wondered about the scheming Ilsa and the outrageous Prince Dobbs.  I was happy to tell her I gave them a paragraph in the epilogue of The Heart of a Sinner. While not there in person, others gossip about them. Yes, Ilsa is still trying to get Prince to marry her.
     If there are any characters you are curious about, let me know. I assure you they are all living full and interesting lives in my imagination. Who knows when they will show up again in my writing?
     

Too Many Characters

     Too many characters--I find this written on almost every critique I get from my editor and beta readers.  For some reason, a romance novel can have only two major character or Points of View, and perhaps a third if you have a really good villain allowed to plot against them. It's a tried and true formula that has worked for Harlequin next to forever and which I find terribly confining. After all, how many people really fall in love and marry in a vacuum of space? Most of us get input from family at the very least. All of us have a workplace full of people and customers to deal with as the courtship goes on. Children come along and have their own opinions.
      I recently judged two well-written Harlequins for the Rita contest. In order for one couple to stay in their own little world, a beloved brother had to be called out of town as soon as they met, not to reappear until the wedding, and the friend who introduced them similarly took off, her role ending there. In the other, the troubled teen who brings the couple together as they try to save her suddenly reforms and leaves them on their own. She does get to be in the wedding.  Never in real life. I guess that is why they are called romances.
      In writing my Sinners series, my quarterback hero has accumulated twelve children and helped his friends with their love problems over the span of five books from Goals for a Sinner to Love Letter for a Sinner. He's accumulated a lot of POV's along the way, and my readers seem to want to be part of his large family and keep up with the other members of the team. I admit, it is best to start reading them with the first or second book as the cast does grow as they go along.  I recently got back a critique that said I'd given everyone a name. Heaven forbid!  The named people aren't props, but family retainers well-known from other books. I do wonder if Downton Abbey has this trouble?  She also felt the other football players should not have names or opinions. Pretty tough to play a game that way. The only solution is to stage all the stories during the off-season with no football at all which is what many sports romances do to keep down the character count. Unfortunately, my guys have Super Bowls to win.
      Diana Gabaldon now has a book for people simply to keep track of her hundreds of characters. Of course, she does say she writes historical novels, not romance.  Would it help if I called my books family sagas, do you think?  It seems every other genre can have as many characters as they want and not get dinged for it. Go figure. I've taken to listing the main characters in the front of my books now, starting with Son of a Sinner. If the sequel to the family saga, Always Yellow Roses, entitled The Courville Rose is ever published it will have a similar list, though I have every faith that my regular readers can handle a story with more than two characters--and long sentences and big words, too, because they are that intelligent.
     Just griping here about one of my favorite pet peeves of romance writing along with being admonished not to use big words. I don't advise new romance writers to defy conventions and go for more POVs.  You won't get published--unless call your stories something else like multigenerational sagas, and good luck with that!