Remembering Your First Love

Writing a novel is like falling in love.  And out again. And in.  And out.  Until you can't remember why you ever wanted to write it in the first place.

So what made you fall in love with your book? What idea, or character, or theme, sparked the romance for you?

For me, it was the idea of writing a Tolkein-ish story from the girl's point of view. Let's face it, there is hardly any female perspective in the fabulous "Lord of the Rings."  The movies did a better job than Tolkein did.  Which is okay.  He was a guy writing a guy's epic.

But what if you had a similar world, with magic and danger and heroism... with girls in it who actually got to do stuff?  Girls who weren't Amazons or warrior princesses, but real women who hate blood as much as I do, but can screw up the courage to stab somebody when there's no other way to stop them?  Like Padme Amidala and her "aggressive negotiations."  So that really turned me on... how can I write an exciting story that has strong feminine leads who still retain their femininity?

What happened was that, as I wrote, I discovered that I needed to get inside of the male lead, too.  He went from being a two-dimensional Disney-style "guy with a sword" to a real guts-and-grime hero.  I still don't quite know how he sprang into being, but he did nonetheless. I guess there's a little Faldur in me, buried deep down somewhere.

It doesn't hurt, of course, that I'd mentally cast Hugh Jackman to play him in the movie version.  You gotta love Hugh!