Beautiful People: Valentine’s edition

Beautiful People is a monthly meme for writers. Every month, the hosts — Cait at Paper Fury and Sky at Further Up and Further In — post a list of 10 questions for writers to answer about your characters. It’s designed to help everyone get to know the chosen characters: their quirks, their personality, their flaws, and who they are.

This month’s theme is luuuuuurve, because tomorrow is Half-Price-Chocoalte Day or whatever. For something different, I wanted to talk about the characters in my as-yet-unreleased adult urban fantasy, Lucid Dreaming: Melaina and Brad. I haven’t announced this officially yet, but I’m currently gearing up to release Lucid Dreaming in the last quarter of 2015. Woo!

How long have they been a couple?

They meet and get together during the course of the story. By the end of the book they’ve been together about a week and a half.

What? It is a very busy week and a half!

How did they first meet?

That’s a little awkward, and Brad doesn’t like to talk about it…

But I’m his author, so I will. 😉 Basically, he kinda sorta tries to strangle her in her bed. He doesn’t actually remember it, though. He was asleep at the time.

What were their first thoughts of each other? (Love at first sight or “you’re freakishly annoying”?)

Her first thought was, “Who is that weirdly dressed hot guy following me home?” His — a day later — was, “I don’t know her so she must be here to visit the woman sharing my ward room. Dammit!”

What do they do that most annoys each other?

Other than the way they met? (Melaina was pretty bloody annoyed about that!)

They haven’t really been together long enough to discover that they hate the way the other person hogs the remote or puts the toilet paper on the dispenser (over vs under: the eternal debate).

Are their personalities opposite or similar?

Somewhere in between. Brad is a bit of a sceptic about the supernatural when they first get together, so Melaina’s explanations about what is happening to him just make him angry. But once he realises she’s for real, he starts to come around.

Melaina is much more open-minded about that sort of thing — just because she’s never seen a ghost, that doesn’t mean they aren’t real.

How would their lives be different without each other?

There’d be a lot less kissing, for a start! 😉

Are they ever embarrassed about each other?

Give it time! Brad might have been worried about taking her home to meet the parents, given her nose piercing and blue fringe, but he’s an orphan. And his sister, the other relative who might disapprove, liked Melaina before he did.

Does anyone disapprove of their relationship?

Yes. Melaina’s friend Jen is wary at first, worried Brad might have another “incident”. Her other sometimes friend (frienemy?), Leander, has similar concerns.

Do they see their relationship as long-term/leading to marriage?

By the end of the book they both know they really like — maybe even love — one another. But they haven’t had a chance to consider it going any further than that. Honestly, I didn’t really give them much of a chance to ponder.

I’m so mean.

If they could plan the “perfect outing” together, where would they go?

Melaina would like to go somewhere that there aren’t too many people, like a bed and breakfast in the country, or a beach house down at the coast. Brad wouldn’t mind too much, but he’d want it to be a well appointed bed and breakfast or beach house, and he’d organise for chocolates and a bottle of champagne to be left in their room…