Authors spend a lot of time with their characters. We become intimately familiar with them by the time we’ve finished telling their stories, but we each use different methods of introduction to them. Some authors use charts, some write letters to and from their characters to ‘hear’ their voices. My initial interaction with my characters is often through an interview. I find that process enlightening and entertaining…and sometimes even sigh-worthy. For me, the best way to get a character to share their innermost thoughts is to meet them where they are, then get out of their way.
In my last character interview, I introduced Johnny Blake, aka Blake, who is the hero
from my debut novel, Surrender at Canyon Road. He was charming, attentive and sweet, with an unexpectedly admirable side of fierce protectiveness. You can find that interview HERE. You’ll see he was protective and adoring of his sister and nephew from the onset, but what struck me was how clearly and lovingly protective he was of Dani Moyer, the heroine from Surrender at Canyon Road. His warnings about not pushing her but letting her speak on her own terms, piqued my curiosity. And so, it is with interest and a bit of nervous excitement that I meet with her today.
Dani switched the location for this interview multiple times due to what she said were last minute photography assignments. Ultimately, we agreed to meet at her little house in Queens, New York as she packed her cameras and other equipment into her car for the next scheduled shoot.
She’s a little thing who’s standing at the curb with cases of equipment positioned around her like a miniature model of Stonehenge. With ease, she hoists a large case into the trunk of her car, which creaks and groans from the weight.
The car is a smallish white Plymouth that looks twice Dani’s age and half her strength. It seems worn, yet clean and solid, and the way she moves around it, puzzling equipment into it with ease, makes the aged car and young woman seem like old friends.
She greets me with a quick glance and distracted hello, then invites me to have a seat on one of the larger camera cases beside her.
I take the seat and open my notepad, aware our interview must be quick because she does have an assignment to get to. I thank her for her time, and get right to my first question.
What can you tell me about yourself?
What do you want to know?
I hesitate, noting our limited time and wondering whether she’ll answer each of my questions with her own question. I rephrase.
Tell me why you chose photography.
Easy. It lets me see the world in a more objective way. I become a bystander instead of a participant. Life is much better that way. Safer, at least. There’s no right or wrong, no good or bad. Just a moment captured in time.
She hoists another case into the trunk, but opens this one and searches it as though auditing the contents.
Of course, when I look at my photographs, I see the stories there. The right and wrong and all that. But it’s after-the-fact. The moment happened, and there’s no going back. So, while the pictures are just a blink in time, the moment they represent are forever and can never be altered. It happened. Whatever it was. And it’s what sets the next moment in motion.
There’s an odd casualness to her voice and cadence that clashes with the profundity of her words. It’s that clash which infuses caution into my next request for information.
Talk to me about your greatest fear.
What about it?
Either she’s being coy with me or she has a serious need to keep her private life private. I clarify once more.
I would like you to tell me what your greatest fear is and whether you’ve told anyone about it.
We are suddenly caught in a staring contest. While I’ve set my focus keenly on her, I have the sense she’s not really staring at me, but inward at something she’d rather not see. Her brows curve up in the center as though a painful recall has firmly settled itself into her mind. In the next instant, she seems less bothered, as if she somehow banished the memory.
I would think everyone has the same fear, I don’t think mine is odd or unique to me.
She gives a nonchalant shrug but I’m not fooled. I saw pain flicker in her eyes before she’d tried to hide it. Blake warned me not to push so I don’t. Instead, I decide to challenge her with a little confession of my own.
I can swim but never go to the deep end of a pool because I have an intense fear of deep water. Is that your fear too?
My honesty seems to reach a softer side of her. A side that, until this moment, she’s kept well hidden from me, and I wonder what happened in her past that keeps her defenses so honed and at the ready.
I guess I am afraid of the deep end, in a way.
She turns away so I can’t see her face as she closes the camera case in the trunk, and sets it farther back to make room for her tripods and other equipment.
But not the deep end of a pool as much as the deep end of my mind…which, I hope is sturdier than my dad’s was.
She grabs a light pole, looks me right in the eye without challenge.
He slid into the deep end and never came out. I don’t want the same thing to happen to me.
She settles the light pole in the trunk, then reaches into a cooler and takes out a bottle of soda I recognize but haven’t seen in quite some time. It’s a coffee soda, a Manhattan Special. My heart flips a bit at the sight of it. With the prettiest little smile, she hands it to me, then grabs another for herself.
Blake knows all about that fear. I didn’t mean to tell him, but he talks a lot and, somehow got me talking too. Kinda like you.
Her tone implies that was anything but complimentary but I accept it as a compliment regardless. She opens her soda then takes a long swallow. I do the same, and the taste and tingle is as luscious as I remember. We enjoy a moment of indulgence, and then I start again, not allowing this distraction to linger.
Tell me about someone, one person, who made a difference in your life.
My mom. Through her, I learned about love, patience, loss and even forgiveness. I also learned that the pain of loss never goes away completely.
There’s a wistful tone to her voice now but that edge of defensiveness is still there, as well, still cutting and strong.
Where do you go when you need time to yourself?
She doesn’t answer right away. I look up from my notepad and I’m blinded by the flash on her camera. She lowers it, and smiles at me as I try to blink away the spots that linger.
When I was a kid, it was in my bedroom closet. Now it’s this side of my camera.
I feel a pang of sadness as I wonder about the child she was and why that child needed alone time in a closet. I carefully ask my next question.
Do have a secret? If so, why do you feel the need to keep it secret?
I have memories that I keep secret because they’re that special to me, and memories have a way of fading if you think about them too often or for too long.
She motions to the case I’m sitting on and before I’m completely on my feet, she swings the case up and settles it into the trunk with everything else. With that last piece of equipment in there, there’s not a bit of room left. She packed the trunk so well, it looks like a sliding block puzzle.
I’m about to compliment her when she takes a set of keys from her pocket and gives them a shake, unceremoniously informing me our time is up. My last question spills out in a rush of words.
What is your most prized possession and why do you value it so much?
My camera equipment, of course.
I know that matters to her, but I see that tiny sad brow lift again and know there’s more. I wait. Oddly, she blinks first once more, and I think back to the similarities I saw between her and her burdened yet sturdy car.
There’s also, a ceramic cookie jar my mom made for me when I was a little girl. It’s full of memories—secrets, I guess—that I’ll keep with me forever. The other is a doll, Molly, and the little blue dress Mama made for her. She sang happy birthday and put the dress on Molly the morning of my 5th birthday. She died that afternoon.
The slam of the trunk jerks me from my moment of shock. The chug of Dani’s car as she drives off without another word, shakes me nearly as much as her parting statement. And as her car disappears around the corner I feel like part of the little girl who had tucked herself into her closet still lives inside the complicated woman Dani has become.
I find myself falling more in love with these characters with each question they answer…or try to avoid. And it’s that love for them which keeps me bound to the keyboard as I tell the stories they need me to tell.
