characters

piece by piece

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 6 Comments

The first thing I ever read by Stephen King was The Green Mile. I had read in a magazine that he was going to publish a novel in six monthly installments, and I was ready. Each month, I was at the bookstore the day the new part came out.

In the introduction to the first volume, he mentioned seeing his mother reading a mystery. As he was watching, she put her finger to mark her place, and then looked ahead at the ending. He was shocked (already thinking like a writer), and part of the deal with The Green Mile was to make that impossible. When the main character handed a prisoner a shoe, I had to wait a month to find out how that shoe proved the man innocent (one of the things removed from the movie, but don't get me started on that).

I've always liked things that come in episodes (hence all the sections called "Episodes" in the first half of U-town, which is how they were posted on BBSs in the early 1990s -- one episode at a time). I've talked before about how much I liked I Love a Mystery and Dark Shadows (the former was after the fact, of course).

Do you want to know what will happen, the coming event that Jan Sleet knows, and nobody else does? You'll learn when it happens. You can't peek ahead and find out, any more than Marshall can.

But I confess that half of the reason I work as I do, piece by piece, brick by brick, is because I enjoy working that way. Like building a house without plans, hoping it will come out right. There's a certain excitement to that.

On another subject, I've been thinking about Daphne. I think that, at some point, we'll have to learn more about her. Not right now, of course, since she's not even in this part.

For example, is "Daphne" even her name? Carl called her that, but he also called Pete "Eustace," and he referred to starling as "Lady Britomart" and "Sweetie."

I think there's a lot more we need to know about Daphne, along with her rather unconventional (and soon to expand) family.

More of the current chapter, not including Daphne, next week.

no character left behind

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

Periodically, I look over my character list to see who’s due for a blog entry. Eventually I want to have a blog entry for every significant character.

But some characters are difficult to write about without giving away too much information, so that’s one issue. And, when I look over the list, there are some characters who, whether or not they’ve had a blog entry, jump out at me because we haven’t seen them enough in the story itself.

Some of those are because they haven’t fit into this story, but I know they’ll show up later, like Vinnie. We last saw him as a teenage tough in a leather jacket, leaving the town of Ross with Alex. But we know that, since then, he’s gone on to do quite a few different things, but, while he’s been talked about, we haven’t actually seen him. But I have a pretty good idea we will, though not in this novel.

But others are present, on the scene, but haven’t appeared much, like Sarah Little. She’s been seen at a distance, and discussed, but she hasn’t actually had a line of dialogue since A Sane Woman. What’s up with that?

For one thing, there has been a certain amount of discussion of how she’s still hung up on her ex-lover, but is that really true?

And, however she feels about it in general, how does she feel about their recent fling? Seems like that’s a question (or two) worth getting into.

I’m not sure if that will come later in this novel, or if it will come during rewrites. But it should be answered.

With this much going on, this many characters, I do have to be sure not to misplace anything or anybody. As the Dude says, “This is a very complicated case. Lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-you’s. Lotta facets, lotta interested parties. Lotta strands to keep in my head, man. Lotta strands in old Duder’s head.”

Though, unlike the Dude, I’m not adhering to a strict drug regimen to keep my mind limber, which may help. When I finish this draft, the first thing I will do is go back to the beginning (A Sane Woman) and read the whole thing, to see if (as in the movie “Go“) I’ve forgotten about any major characters.

Marshall

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

It’s a little surprising that there hasn’t been an entry about Marshall until now. I had to go back and check to make sure.

After all, his employer (Jan Sleet) was the first character to get one, and it’s not really possible to think about her without thinking about him. Sherlock Holmes, as I think he pointed out at one point, was lost without his loyal friend and biographer Dr. Watson, and how could Nero Wolfe have solved a single mystery without Archie Goodwin?

So, it’s really a shame that Marshall has not been recognized until now. Jan Sleet wouldn’t have got far, as a reporter or as a detective, without him, and the one time we see her on her own for an extended period (in the first four chapters of U-town) she’s clearly miserable. Her eerie self-confidence returns the minute they are back together.

But there’s something else important about Marshall, which is that he’s narrated quite a few chapters, the only character to do so. He narrated the last four chapters (and the epilogue) of A Sane Woman, and three chapters in U-town (including the last one). Which is an interesting coincidence, his always narrating the ends of the novels, because current plans are for him to narrate the ending of the current one as well. I didn’t really think about this pattern until now.

We don’t know much about Marshall’s early life. His last name is mentioned only once (and there is a chance that he gave the wrong name in that situation, to see if anybody would notice). He is Irish, and (we can assume) at least a bit older than his employer. There has never even been a physical description of him (as there never was of Archie Goodwin), though I have the idea that he’s good-looking. It’s hard to imagine Jan Sleet hiring an assistant who was not pleasant to look at. After all, one of the few things that Dr. John (or possibly James) Watson and Archie Goodwin had in common was that they were obviously attractive to women.

Of course, Marshall has often had difficulty translating this attractiveness into anything tangible, since his employer is always watching, ready to interfere.

I don’t think I’ve quoted this exchange I had with Cyndi about Marshall:

Cyndi: hey are we going to see any more Marshall’s-POV chapters?
John: yup. not soon, though
Cyndi: woot. I like him.
John: he’s not flashy, kind of quiet, but he’s a good character to write
Cyndi: yeah that’s what I like about him. you kind of have to dig to make him seen.
John: exactly, he’s an observer, but he’s a feeling person, not emotionally shut off (like some people who observe a lot)
Cyndi: right. I like that.

Marshall is currently assisting his employer in a series of mystery stories.

Neil

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

Neil first appears as the bodyguard of Dr. Lee, the leader of the Jinx. But it becomes obvious, especially starting in the chapter The Burning, that he’s much more than that. When there’s an emergency, he automatically takes command, coordinating and ordering his “troops,” as he does here, but it’s Dr. Lee who ultimately decides what they are going to do, though she doesn’t issue orders or raise her voice, as he does here.

But Neil sometimes has his own agenda, as he does here, when he indicates to Pete that he wants to set up a situation where starling will kill a murderer for him, because he is not allowed to take private vengeance. And he is honest enough to admit that it’s not because the victim mattered to him, it’s because his pride was hurt that the murderer was able to succeed despite his plan to protect the victim.

It is pretty clear in the novel U-town that Neil and starling had some sort of history (this is much clearer and more detailed in the new novel, of course). The first hint is when he calls her “Kat” (the first time we see anybody call her by her name other than Pete), and it’s clearer in the scene I link to above, when Neil gives Pete some very good advice.

Neil is very tough, and he sees a lot of things in terms of strength and weakness, but he obviously does care about people, as we can see in the passage I mention above. And it is significant, too, that he made a different choice than Dr. Lee in the Return to U-town chapter. However, his disdain for human weakness will be called out very soon, and very forcefully, since U-town is not based on the same ideas as the Jinx.

In the new novel, we see Neil functioning without Dr. Lee, and he has somewhat fallen into a similar role in his new situation, letting others figure out what should be done, and then seeing his responsibility as figuring out how. But U-town is not the Jinx, and they don’t have any use for that sort of military discipline.

Neil does not appear in A Sane Woman. In U-town, he is first mentioned in A World So Alive, and then he is first seen in Prove It (Just the Facts). In the new novel, he is first seen in the Return to U-town chapter.

Tammy Everett

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

Tammy Everett's walk was one thing she was proud of, one of many.

Tammy was a successful attorney until she decided to retire from active practice (for her health, as she says now). Since her retirement, she has concentrated more on her family, which she had little time for when she was focused on her career. She is trying, very quietly, to rebuild some bridges.

She recently learned that her real father was Jacob Everett, the famous (and reportedly deceased) novelist, and she decided to take his last name as her own. She has read all of his novels, and many of the protagonists (most commonly described as macho, taciturn, grim, stoic, reserved, individualistic and humorless) appealed to her, though of course they were all male.

When she and SarahBeth have been together, Tammy has been appalled at the younger woman's relentless broadcasting of her urges, opinions, humors, desires and bodily functions to the world, but they do share one thing, which is a disdain for what SarahBeth inevitably refers to as "mushiness." The Old Man (as Jacob Everett was known for most of his life) would have agreed with that.

Tammy is first described in Chapter Five of A Sane Woman. We first see her in Chapter Eight, and the other characters meet her in Chapter Thirteen, the chapter which bears her name.

She does not appear in U-town. In the new novel, she first appears in the chapter Return to U-town.

distance, time, randi and alex

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

First of all, the Distance and Time chapter is done. If you’ve read the earlier parts, you can pick it up at the theater here. If you want the whole chapter in one file, for example if you’re going to print it, you can get it here.

In other news, I mentioned to a reader that Randi’s name is partly a nod to The Amazing Randi, a stage magician who devotes considerable attention to debunking psychics, ghosts and other fake paranormal phenomena. I liked the idea of Randi sharing his name, since he would work pretty hard to disprove her existance, which would amuse her.

I also mentioned that, outside of Randi, I keep the other paranormal (superhuman) abilities to the possible (Vicki) or the ambiguous (Alex). When Alex changes, is it a literal transformation (body, hair, clothes), which would pretty much violate the laws of nature, or is it that she makes people see what she wants them to see? Pete will start to wonder about this (he’s very analytical about these sorts of things), specifically speculating about what a photograph would show. Would it show Alex, no matter what, or would it show what the people around her see?

(I don’t know if he’ll get a chance to find out, but I suspect it’s the latter, since we know she has tremendous powers of persuasion.)

In A Sane Woman, of course, the story is told within the frame of “natural reality” (where we all live), so Alex’s transformations happen off-stage.

In the next chapter, some of these questions are discussed, as the characters all drink and socialize (and gossip).