Eden Ashe

Archive for May 13th, 2009

I am still working on my Undying novels. It is a wonderful feeling to have found a world for my characters to play in that fits them and lets them be the characters and heroes that I’ve always imagined them to be. There was always a significant age gap between the heroes and heroines that I couldn’t figure out, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t imagine these men going to school and doing homework and having fun on a playground. That world just seemed foreign to them.

I guess I should explain my relationship with my characters before I go any further. While I admit that I have no idea what is normal and what is not, my characters are living, breathing people in my head. It wasn’t always like that and I fought for control and to make the stories I wrote come out the way that I wanted them to, but with my first romantic-suspense novel, Here With Me, my characters took over and because I had no choice about the matter, I let them.

It was magic.

It also opened up an entire world to me, and it came with characters that I have come to know and love beyond words.  I’ve even started giving life to my bad guys with the belief that the good guys, my Heroes, are only as good and bad-ass as my bad guys are bad. I’ve learned that by not wanting to hurt my characters, I was robbing them of their chance to fight and wage war and move the earth for the one they love. And I firmly believe that it is the heroine’s right to fight just as much as it is the heroes. They may fight for each other in different ways, but it’s her battle as much as it is his. They have to save each other.

By opening up my imagination this way, I have come across several characters that I know I will never be able to fully let go of, so I will continue finding other worlds, other stories, other lives for them, and I will have fun watching them fall in love all over again in different ways.

So as of right now, I am working on Chad and Rachel, one of my favorite Undying couples, though I admit their lack of internal conflict if worrying me a little. Shouldn’t there be something internal to keep them apart, as much as the external plot? I thought so, and it makes my head hurt a little that there’s not, but I am having fun with the story so I am just going to go with it for now, and worry about it if I have to later.