HOW AUTHOR JANET LANE WALTERS USES ASTROLOGY TO CREATE CHARACTERS

Janet Lane Walters has been a published author for fifty years. She writes romance. fantasy, paranormal and mysteries. Today she joins us to explain how she uses astrology to create the characters in her books. Learn more about her and her books at her blog. 

Using Astrology to Develop Characters

   

Many years ago, a friend and I studied astrology and made enough money casting charts for friends to travel to Ireland. Then life changed and became different for both of us. She became an attorney and I became a writer. But I continued to study and read about the various signs and adding many books on my shelves about the subject. 

One day a way to use what I was still learning occurred. I would use astrology to develop my characters. When my computer crashed and I lost my program for setting up the charts, I sort of put my interest away. Then I had some trouble developing a character from one of my early books. I decided the main elements for developing my characters was to use the Sun Sign, the Rising Sign and the Moon Sign. This worked wonders and is now part of the way I learn about those who people my stories.

   

Let me tell you how this works. The Sun sign gives their inner nature and this is usually where their secret arises. The character may or may not show this nature to the world. This is where their reasons for wanting to achieve their goal are either hidden or not shown in full.

   

The Ascendant shows the face they present to the world. The way others see them may not be what they truly are unless I give them the same Sun sign as the Ascendant. Many times the two sides of their personality can be in conflict, thus giving them a great internal conflict. 

   

The Moon shows their emotional nature. Think of the hero with a soft spot in his heart or the heroine who hides her emotions from others. The emotional nature can be in conflict with the character’s goals and usually points to the reason for this.

While this may not work for every author when developing characters, this method certainly works for me. In Forgotten Dreams Emma, the heroine, is a Cancer and Chad, the hero, is a Leo.

   

Forgotten Dreams 

The Moonchild Series, Book 5

   

Chad Morgan is tired of his Hollywood life and his role as action hero Storm. He's ignoring the contracts for two more movies in the franchise. He wants to take a different direction and make a movie of his friend's book. He has bought the rights. But his agent and the studio want more Storm. His personal life is also bouncing from one woman to another. His thoughts have turned to Emma Grassi, the woman he left behind in his quest for fame. He decides to return to Fern Lake and speak to his friend and renew his friendship with Emma.

Emma is now a nurse practitioner sharing an office with her doctor friend. She has waited for Chad to return and has decided this isn't going to happen. She's decided to confront him and put an end to the dream she has remembered and he has forgotten. Life takes a twist when Chad 's auto accident on the outskirts of Fern Lake bring them together. She wants out. He wants in.

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GUEST AUTHOR MARGO BOND COLLINS ON RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE

photo by Peter van der Sluijs

Multi-published author Margo Bond Collins teaches college-level English courses online, though writing fiction is her first love. She enjoys reading urban fantasy and paranormal fiction of any genre and spends most of her free time daydreaming about vampires, ghosts, zombies, werewolves, and other monsters. Learn more about Margo and her books at her website and blog.

Running for Your Life

A few years ago, I started running as part of my exercise routine. I don’t really like it, exactly. I’m not especially good at it. I tend to be better at the stretchier kinds of exercise—yoga and such. But I’ve discovered that running is kind of addictive. I like the meditative state I can reach when I finally hit my stride, and the way that running gives me time to let my body do its thing while I spend some quality time up in my head. Many of my plot problems get worked out when I’m running. So it’s perhaps not surprising that Elle, the heroine of my latest release, Legally Undead, would also take up running.  In her case, though, she is literally running for her life:

Graduate courses in history don’t prepare one for running away from a vampire. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to the gym. “Out of shape” was an understatement. He caught up with me easily, just as I reached the corner of the nearest building. I felt his hand brush the back of my neck, felt his fingernails--claws? something sharp--dig into the top of my back.

With a final burst of speed I didn’t know I had in me, I rounded the corner into a pool of light. And ran smack into a man walking out the door.

I think “bowled him over” might be an accurate description. He’d been carrying a stack of books, and they went flying everywhere as he and I went down. I think I skidded across him and rolled to a stop--I know I ended up flat on my back on the concrete apron in front of the door, staring up at the sky, just in time to see Greg do some complicated flip over me.

And like many of us who come to running out of a desire to live a longer, healthier life, she overdoes it a bit at first, and has to come to terms with the fact that becoming a real runner takes time—especially for people who begin life as exercise-phobes:

I turned over, ready to spring out of bed, and instead rolled up into a groaning ball. I hurt all over. Every single muscle. My arms felt like they’d been pulled halfway out of their sockets. My neck was stiff, my calves felt like they were contracting up into my stomach somewhere. The sheets scraped against my battered knees like sandpaper.

From now on, I vowed, I was going to hit the gym every single day. If I was really going to continue to live, I needed to be able to get away from vampires that attacked me, and that meant being able to move. Quickly. And reliably. If I couldn’t trust my body not to go into the fetal position when I tried to move it, I wouldn’t survive long.

Although she doesn’t keep her vow to go to the gym every single day, she does manage to survive—even if she has to keep running longer than she ever anticipated!

So what do other exercise-phobes do to overcome a reluctance to hit the gym (or the track)?

Legally Undead

A reluctant vampire hunter, stalking New York City as only a scorned bride can.

Elle Dupree has her life all figured out: first a wedding, then her Ph.D., then swank faculty parties where she’ll serve wine and cheese and introduce people to her husband the lawyer.

But those plans disintegrate when she walks in on a vampire draining the blood from her fiancé Greg. Horrified, she screams and runs--not away from the vampire, but toward it, brandishing a wooden letter opener.

As she slams the improvised stake into the vampire’s heart, a team of black-clad men bursts into the apartment. Turning around to face them, Elle discovers that Greg’s body is gone—and her perfect life falls apart.

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READ TUESDAY. TWENTY QUESTIONS FOR…RLL.

Who is RLL? He’s one of the writers taking part in the worldwide Read Tuesday movement scheduled for December 10th. In order to get the word out about Read Tuesday, he came up with twenty questions for participating authors to answer, theirs on his blog, his on theirs. You can find author Lois Winston’s answers to his questions here. 

And here, for your amusement and enjoyment, are RLL’s answers to his own questions:

1. Fire rages in your house. Everyone is safe, but you. You decide to smash through the window, shielding your face with a book. What is the book?

THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, by Stephen Crane. I should have liked this book. It fell flat on first reading. As I know I must return to the tale, it's the book to save.

2. Asleep in your rebuilt house, you dream of meeting a dead author. But not in a creepy stalkerish way, so you shoo Mr Poe out of the kitchen. Instead, you sit down and have cake with which dead author?

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson. He finishes Weir of Hermiston. I offer him a can of Irn-Bru, telling him it's a very Scottish drink.

3. Would you name six essential items for writers? If, you know, cornered and threatened with torture.

Half a dozen plaques to hang on your wall.

   NEVER GIVE UP.

   MAKE MISTAKES AND LEARN FROM THEM.

   READ YOUR WORK ALOUD.

   OFFER HELP TO OTHER WRITERS.

   READ COPYRIGHT LAW.

   ALWAYS LOOK BOTH WAYS WHEN CROSSING THE ROAD - ESPECIALLY WITH AN UNFINISHED NOVEL WAITING AT HOME.

4. Who’d win in a fight between Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster? If, you know, you were writing that scene.

The battle is interrupted by Peter Vincent, who sees off Dracula. Vincent's colleague is Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She tells the monster to shape up or ship out. Elvira and Vincent then marry in Vegas. A preacher dressed as Elvis seals the deal. His fee - an autographed copy of Fright Night - a documentary about vampirism.

5. It’s the end of a long and tiring day. You are still writing a scene. Do you see it through to the end, even though matchsticks prop your eyelids open, or do you sleep on it and return, refreshed, to slay that literary dragon another day?

Sometimes a burning need to finish a scene kills tiredness. It's easier to keep going if writing a scene. And it's much harder to keep going if editing.

6. You must introduce a plot-twist. Evil twin or luggage mix-up?

I'd introduce an evil luggage mix-up.

7. Let’s say you write a bunch of books featuring an amazing recurring villain. At the end of your latest story you have definitely absitively posolutely killed off the villain for all time and then some. Did you pepper your narrative with clues hinting at the chance of a villainous return in the next book?

If fictional villains are hard to kill, they should be hard to bring back.

8. You are at sea in a lifeboat, with the barest chance of surviving the raging storm. There’s one opportunity to save a character, drifting by this scene. Do you save the idealistic hero or the tragic villain?

My natural optimism convinces me that I won't actually survive the raging storm. In attendant newspaper stories, the deceased hero is painted as a cad, the deceased villain is painted as something of a hero, and I am painted tartan. The type of tartan is misrepresented by journalists who weren't within 500 miles of the disaster.

9. It’s time to kill a much-loved character – that pesky plot intrudes. Do you just type it up, heartlessly, or are there any strange rituals to be performed before the deed is done?

I take out an order barring Kathy Bates from my country.

10. Embarrassing typo time. I’m always typing thongs instead of things. One day, that’ll land me in trouble. Care to share any wildly embarrassing typing anecdotes? If, you know, the wrong word suddenly made something so much funnier. (My last crime against typing lay in omitting the u from Superman.)

Once I couldn't even manage typos, as I'd disconnected the keyboard.

11. I’ve fallen out of my chair laughing at all sorts of thongs I’ve typed. Have you?

Now I think on it, I tend to trip, fall, vault, fly, careen, career, carom, crash and crump my way through life.

12. You take a classic literary work and update it by throwing in rocket ships. Dare you name that story? Pride and Prejudice on Mars. That kind of thing.

I try a literary mash-up, taking the idea from Fantastic Voyage and bolting it to Mark Twain's work - giving us King Arthur's Court in a Connecticut Yankee. Arthur and his knights are reduced to micro-miniature size and take a submarine strip through the veins of a disgruntled American. Raquel Welch plays Guinevere.

13. Seen the movie. Read the book. And your preference was for?

Fritz Lang's Moonfleet is an adaptation that wanders far from J.Meade Falkner's book. With that in mind, I much prefer the book - though 'twas the movie led me to the tome.

14. Occupational hazard of being a writer. Has a book ever fallen on your head? This may occasionally happen to non-writers, it must be said.

I feel more pain on seeing books mistreated.

15. Did you ever read a series of books out of sequence?

As I'm providing different answers on each guest-spot, I am fast running out of examples. On a side-note, years passed between reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and picking up a copy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I read Tom's adventures again, just before I tackled Huckleberry's. Over time, Huck's adventures have acquired the definite article - something guaranteed to infuriate and amuse Twain by turns.

16. You encounter a story just as you are writing the same type of tale. Do you abandon your work, or keep going with the other one to ensure there won’t be endless similarities?

I think the important thing is to avoid writing the same tale twice.

17. Have you ever stumbled across a Much-Loved Children’s Classic™ that you’ve never heard of?

Occasionally, you stumble over works you thought you'd heard of. Jules Verne stands as one of the most-translated authors in literature. His work lays claim to a less-beneficial title. Verne is probably the most-mistranslated author out there. This meant it was a long while before I realised Verne's book was called Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.

18. You build a secret passage into your story. Where?

The title. Click on that to open the door.

19. Facing the prospect of writing erotica, you decide on a racy pen-name. And that would be…

Tougher than I thought. Make it up! Er, then check the internet. I started with Delfine Augier and switched to Delphine Augier. No good. Those people are out there. But surely I'd get away with Delphine Aubergine...

20. On a train a fan praises your work, mistaking you for another author. What happens next?

The train collides with a dirigible before either of us can say another word.

~~~

For LOIS WINSTON/EMMA CARLYLE/ANASTASIA POLLACK answers to my questions, visit REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Here's a blog post on READ TUESDAY.

And here's a funny one on CONTACTING PEOPLE FOR READ TUESDAY.

Featured in the READ TUESDAY sale on December the 10th, 2013 - Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords and WITCHES. Both will be free on the day. 

BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--GUEST AUTHOR DIANA RUBINO

Author Diana Rubino has a passion for history. She writes biographical novels with no fictional characters. Her latest work is Give Us Liberty, the story of Martha Washington as told by her favorite servant, her slave Oney Judge. Today Diana talks about her passion for Abraham Lincoln. Read more about her and her books at her website and blog. – AP




A Necessary End 

Abraham Lincoln has fascinated me since I was eight years old. I don’t know what got me started, but it might’ve been a book which I still have, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 1, written in 1895. When I was in 3^rd grade, in the mid-60’s (which shows how long I’ve been a Lincoln nut), my teacher asked us to bring a book to school from home for Show & Tell. My mother suggested I bring this Lincoln book, which even in 1966 was in bad shape—yellowed, stiffened strips of Scotch tape barely held the covers to the spine.

With the wisdom of an 8-year-old that sadly, all of us outgrow, I demurred, saying, “This old book? She’ll think we’re poor!” My mother corrected me: “No, she’ll think we’re rich. Books like this are rare.” Then she proceeded to tape it up some more. Those 47-year-old Scotch tape fragments adhere to the book’s spine and pages to this day. The teacher, Miss Cohen, was duly impressed.

I still treasure that book to this day, and it’s one of many on my “Lincoln shelf” which holds books about our murdered president, his wife Mary, his assassin John Wilkes Booth and his family, the “Mad Booths of Maryland” and the conspirators who faced the gallows or years of hard labor because Booth, their charismatic leader, sucked these poor impressionable souls into his insane plot.

After writing eight historicals set in England and New York City, I decided to indulge my passion for Lincoln-lore. I began researching in depth about Lincoln’s life, his presidency, his role in the Civil War, and Booth’s plans to first kidnap him, then to assassinate him.

A Necessary End combined two genres I’m passionate about—history and paranormal. I joined The Surratt Society, based in Maryland, and attended their conferences and tours. Through the Surratt Society, I met several Lincoln/Booth/Civil War experts. One lady I’ll never forget meeting is Marjorie “Peg” Page, who by all accounts except definitive DNA testing, is John Wilkes Booth’s great granddaughter.

My trips to Lincoln's home and tomb in Springfield, Illinois, Gettysburg, Ford’s Theater, and the house he died in, Petersen House, brought me close to Mr. Lincoln’s spirit. My travels also acquainted me with Booth’s brother Edwin, the most famous actor of his time, and his unconventional family.  A recording of Edwin’s voice reciting Shakespeare on one of Edison’s wax cylinders still exists.

My paranormal experience includes investigations at several haunted homes, restaurants and graveyards. I investigate with a group from Merrimack, NH, led by CC Carole. I’ve never seen a ghost, but I’ve received responses to my questions with my dowsing rods. Wishing I had my recorder with me, I made a ghost laugh at the Jumel Mansion in Harlem, New York City, (see the story and photos on my blog)

Tragically, we’ll never hear Abraham Lincoln’s voice. But his spirit lives on. In my book, which is fiction—but we all know that novels are fictionalized truths—I gave Booth what was coming to him. He got his justice in real life, but in A Necessary End, he also got the paranormal twist he deserves.

And I enjoyed sticking it to him!

I paralleled the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar in this story because in the play, Caesar was known as a tyrant to the Senators, who feared losing their power, as Booth feared losing the Confederacy. Booth always considered Lincoln the tyrant, hence his proclamation, “sic simper tyrannis” (be it ever to tyrants) when he jumped to the stage after shooting Lincoln.

Caesar’s Senators, Brutus and Cassius among them, conspired to stab Caesar to death on an appointed day. Booth recruited a group of like-minded disciples to aid him in his insane plot, at first to kidnap Lincoln, then to kill him.

By day, Booth was a Confederate spy and courier, taking dangerous missions so that his beloved South could fight the North in the war that tore the nation in two. But in this story, an even darker secret plagues him—he believes he’s the reincarnation of Brutus, the man who slew the tyrant Caesar, and Booth’s destiny in this life is to murder the tyrant who’s ravaged the South—Abraham Lincoln. In obeying the spirit of Brutus, Booth devises a plot to assassinate the tyrant.

I wrote the book as a paranormal instead of a straight historical novel  because spirituality was extremely popular in 1865 and all throughout Victorian times. Mary Lincoln was a staunch spiritualist. So stricken with grief after the deaths of her boys Willie and Eddie, she hired mediums such as Nettie Maynard to visit the White House and hold séances in attempts to contact her sons from beyond the grave.

The extent of séances, table-tapping, Ouija boards, Tarot cards, and otherworldly activities in this era fit perfectly with the story I wanted to tell. We could never enter Booth’s head, but his insane behavior begs the question: was he truly haunted by a spirit who drove him to his heinous act that changed history forever?

Blurb:

When actor John Wilkes Booth, under the guise of seeking spiritual advice, visits the President's medium to gather information about Lincoln's habits in order to kidnap him, a malevolent spirit begins to haunt and torment him, driving him to the brink of insanity. A mysterious coin also appears out of nowhere, and returns every time Booth tries to discard it. Each return of the bloodthirsty Roman coin brings increasingly terrifying events and eerie hauntings. In the midst of these strange visitations, Booth falls in love with Alice Grey, a beautiful actress who's hired by the government to spy on him. She’s torn between her love for Booth and her duty to protect the President from assassination.

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