First, thank you, Caridad, for inviting me to guest blog!
We all have something we fear whether it’s a monster we saw in a movie or something we face every day like…oh, I don’t know…spiders. (yes, I’m deathly afraid of the little buggers).
Having those fears is partly what makes us humans. When creating characters, authors want readers to connect to those characters, to laugh with them, to cry with them, to love with them, and even to fear with them.
So, I like to give my characters fears. Little Man (my 7 year old son) thinks I’m being mean by doing this, but I like to think of it as doing what comes naturally. ïŠ After all, if I’ve got to deal with my fears daily, so do my characters.
In DANGEROUS HIGHLANDER the heroine, Cara, has a fear of the dark that borders on the extreme. When you’re poor in Medieval Scotland, you don’t waste candles when sleeping. But Cara does.
It stems from when she witnessed her parents murdered by monsters. Of course, as she grew older, she thought what she had seen was changed by her young mind. (Our minds do have a way of shifting things without us even realizing it sometimes.)
That is until she meets up with those monsters again.
How each of us face our fears is what, ultimately, shapes us into the person we are. Some run from their fears. Others face them head on. Which type are you?
I’ll be giving away a signed copy of either MUTUAL DESIRE or THE PLEASURE OF HIS BED to a commenter that tells me what their fear is.
Hugs,
D
www.donnagrant.com