Slut or Star-crossed Lover? God! Do I need a new heroine?
My lead female character has just betrayed her husband by sleeping with her life’s love. Will my readers understand the passions that drove her? Or will they condemn her and her act?
It is midmorning on one of those typical Vienna December days. Everything is gray; the sky, the pavement under my feet, and the murky waters of the Danube Canal to my left, and to my right, the exhaust fumes drifting from the idling cars caught in yet another Monday morning mega-jam.
Wrong. My runners are neon orange. And as I make my way toward the halfway point of my run my thoughts are black at the thought of having to do a major tweak to Ariella. Do I have to mess with the spunky, witty, and engagingly bitchy character on whose relationship with the hero The Sword and the Prophecy rests?
I could make her faithful. But then, what? How does that tie in with Jafar’s threat to expose her relationship with Jamal? Or unmarried and she and Jamal live happily ever after finding each other again? Nahh. Their story has hardly begun!
I’ve already passed the Hundertwasser waste incinerator plant with its golden chimney ball and in-your-face architecture before I decide to let her be as God (in this case yours truly, the author), created her.
Flawed but real. Life imitating art. Isn’t that what books are all about? I never pretended to write Christian Romance.
My internal debate ended with that thought, I take a deep breath and decide to concentrate on my running. But the next distraction is only as far away as Bikers Wien, the bike shop less than a 40-second sprint away. I wave at the fellow runner, as we pass each other, me coming, he going. But there is something about his face. It starts me thinking of my mass murderer in my alpine mystery.
How do I make the crimes he committed almost justifiable? He certainly suffered enough to drive him over the edge. Still killing four people, including the man as close to a saint as anyone in his village was? That’s a lot to expect from the reader!
I’ve got that angle figured out by the time I pass the last bridge before the overpass that will take me back home on the canal’s other side. But that problem has led to another.
How will Rosi deal with—.
Oops! Bite your tongue!
Trust me. This one was HUGE! And I almost gave it away! But you’ll have to take my word for it. Because if I tell you here and now what Rosi’s dilemma was and how she coped, then there’s no point in you reading Forget Me Not. And that would kill me, never mind the four villagers!
I can only tell you that I have it sorted by the time I pass the outdoor gym to my right close to the Rossauer Bridge. But as fellow runners familiar with the stretch know, that’s more than four kilometers away from the parcourse near the Nordbrücke, where I turned to start the homeward stretch. That will give you an idea of the magnitude of the predicament both Rosi and I faced.
About 300 meters to go. I sprint up the stairs to the bridge, my legs brimming with anaerobic energy. Only now do I look at my Garmin. Just over seven minutes per kilometer. Not bad! Not only a healthy workout but I’ve also solved three of my characters’ problems.
They should be grateful, I say to myself as I turn the shower to jungle rain. Fortified by a cup of coffee, and comfy in my trainers, I sit down in front of the screen, ready to write. And then my skin starts to crawl.
But really! What about Ariella? Slut or Star-crossed Lover?
