A story may begin with an idea. It may even begin with a place, a memory, or a mood. But those things can easily fade and drift away until the writer is not really sure what he or she had in mind in the first place. The story only becomes real when a character invites herself into the story.

I say “herself” when, of course, I could just as easily say “himself.” And, in fact, there is an important male character who invited himself into my novel The Circle of Thirteen at a very early point and has clung to the story like death. And that’s the problem. Wherever Jesse goes, bad things happen. He might have invited himself into the story, but he’s not someone you would ever invite out for a drink or welcome into your home for tea.

I feel much better about Julia and Maya – the two main female characters in the book. When the book was finished, I was happy that there were two important women characters that I still genuinely liked.

Julia needed no invitation to the story, because The Circle of Thirteen basically revolves around her. (The novel is mostly told through Julia’s first-person voice, but not entirely – Maya has a lot to say, and Jesse pokes his way into the narrative as well). Julia grew up just north of San Francisco and went to University at Berkeley. During the main part of the story in the early 2080’s she is living in New York, where she is the Security Director for the reinvigorated United Nations. She’s in her late 30’s, tall, physically strong, and not afraid of very much – except her own inner demons. Throughout the novel she is fighting the memory of her mother’s illness and death and the man she holds responsible. →

It started with an initial thought — what if the unlikely collision of a failed radio talk show host and a voracious venture capitalist caused an extraordinary impact on the economy at large? For the most part, I imagined I knew how the story would unravel but then reality kicked in and character development took me down a very different path.

Having worked as a tech insider for many years, I knew the types of storylines and sub-storylines I wanted to incorporate but as a first-time novelist, I wasn’t sure of the pacing of the book. I felt some of the elements in the first few drafts sounded a bit forced, so it was back to the drawing board.

I had to put it away for a few weeks and remind myself of what I like to read and that’s dialogue. A great exchange of words can make me feel as if I’m in the book; knee-deep in the situation, which is the feeling I wanted my readers to share. →