Hello,
Thank you for the likes and follows.
I made no notes for this update, I may go off tangent. There might also be many grammatical errors as well, these words are fresh from the brain. I apologize in advance.
The highlights so far are vampire romance research is going well. I was able to find an acceptable name for the male lead in Gothic, the character’s name is Ephraim. His surname is Bishop, but that is also subject to change. The names for the main characters in this story may seem odd. The female lead Melisande was named by her father’s great-aunt. Ephraim is a vampire about 200 or so years old. I wouldn’t be surprised if that name was in the top 50 of baby names in the 19th century. It is found in the Bible.
Now that Ephraim is named, I am thinking about his personality. Author Anne Rice flipped the script on vampire personalities, with her second book in the series The Vampire Lestat. In the first book Interview with a Vampire, Louis was all about the shame of being undead. Lestat was content with being what he was. Since that book, many authors have used the Lestat template over Louis. Their arrogance and haughtiness have grown tremendously. Especially in paranormal romance where similar personalities border on unlikable but that is just my opinion. Before this character remake, the vampire had a Louis personality. I can’t remember why. However, his melancholy and possible ennui and the female lead’s mental anguish harmonized is what drew one to the other. That was the original novel trigger event. This was mentioned before but that initial meeting is scrapped. There are some writers who revel in tormenting their main character. It seems like the physical, mental, and emotional abuse has no point. I don’t want anything that happens to my characters to be just gratuitous abuse. So in the future, I will be devising a completely different meeting/ novel trigger event. Ephraim and Melisande deserve better.
The summary for Connection Lost is still in the early stages. I don’t remember if I mentioned it before but the summary will be divided into acts. Despite act one already being written, summarizing it has its challenges. There are things I want to add and some lines I want to delete. The process is interesting. Another issue with this story is that I feel like my main character, maybe flat and that was not my intention for her or this story. Notes have been made, however, the main focus is to get to the end, with a satisfactory word count of 25k or more.
I have read a number of paranormal romance stories with vampires as the lead. It is part of my research. At first, it felt like I was being lazy but now I think it was a good thing to understand what is expected in vampire paranormal romance. I also have a writing craft book on writing monsters and an everything vampire book. I probably should’ve looked at that book first. In my defense it was in a book app, I hardly use. These books will be on my reading list for this week.
That is all for now. I hope these words find you all doing well. By all means leave a like, comment, or both. Remember to be open to positive opportunities and to be kind.
End.
P.S.: Happy Valentine’s Day, enjoy the sweets.
JC Henry Universe 