It’s Friday!!!!! today I am delighted to welcome Wendy Lou Jones to Star Crossed Reviews.
Thanks for having me on as part of the #HIFortnight celebrations. When I was trying to think about what to write, I looked around and thought, what do people really want to know from me? I’m not that exciting. I can’t say too much about my books without giving the plots away, so men it was! Heroes.
When I start to write a new novel, I imagine a man in my mind, but to describe him, he has to take a definite form, or else he might end up changing as the story goes along, so at that point I turn to the web. Fortunately, in this day and age, there’re heaps of places offering very valuable ‘research’ and you have no idea how hard I try to get this part just right!
I have to consider hair colour, those eyes, whether he’s muscular or lean, his arms, what his stomach would look like… Sorry. Yes, I am nothing if not thorough.
In my first book, The Songbird and the Soldier, my hero was as the title suggests, a soldier, but he was also quiet and brooding, so the man I chose was this.
For the second, By My Side, I had a particular actor in mind and found pictures of him that would fit the dark and brooding consultant surgeon I needed there.
But for my latest book – shock horror – the hero was already set in form from the book before so there was nothing I could do to make him dark and brooding!!! He was blonde! Uh! He was also muscular and a bit of a ladies man. I thought I’d never fall in love with him, but I managed it. I made him tortured (always a winner in my book), I put him through the mill, made him suffer and at last, he won me over.
So don’t ever shirk on the research; it’s the most important bit!
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