The world is full of interesting characters. The trick is asking the right questions.

I’m a people watcher. Whenever I’m out in public, I can’t help noticing the interesting people living their lives around me, and wondering how they got to where they are. It’s a habit that I try to restrain most of the time, especially for the women in the room. The last thing I want to do is make anyone feel creeped out and uncomfortable because of my glances and curiosity. There’s really no explanation that sounds plausible when you’ve accidentally been staring at a woman during her workout, so it’s best to avert mine eyes.

The gym is really the worst place for my curious creative brain. It’s a venue with an increased likelihood of lechery, and my brutish features don’t help convince anyone that I’m not up to no good. Nor does my habit of staring blankly off to space as I work through a creative idea. So far, I’ve avoided any disastrous misunderstandings, but the danger is always on the horizon. I spend a lot of time looking down at the floor between sets.

But there are so many interesting people at the gym! So many men and women with unique appearances and mannerisms who choose to spend hours working the machines and sweating profusely. There’s a fellow who works out with a speed and intensity that frightens me to watch. He focuses on quick, explosive movements and agility. He shadow boxes between sets. He can do more pull-ups in 30 seconds than I could muster in a day. My first guess is that he fights, either MMA or boxing. But he’s also entirely bereft of body hair, so maybe he’s a competitive body builder. On the other hand, he is as pale as a ghost, and you’d expect most body builders to sport a leathery ultra-tan.

Another example of a story waiting to be told: a woman with mountains of bright blond curly hair piled high atop her head pumps away determinedly on the stairmaster. Her overly ample bosom is restrained tightly enough to eliminate almost all uncomfortable exercise jiggling, and the disproportion of her cleavage to the rest of her body hints at artificial enhancement. Her arms, ankles and collarbone are covered with tattoo work, faded by the years of intense tanning. Her eye makeup is dark and dramatic, and her fingernails are long and shiny with polish. The severe look of her nose and jaw has a masculine quality to it. So why did she choose to make these choices? How did she end up here? These are the questions that run through my brain as I huff and puff my way through my own workout routine, questions that I could never walk up to a stranger and ask.

So I keep the questions inside of my own head and I begin to invent answers to them. That’s why I have a steady supply of ‘new’ characters to put into my stories: I’m harvesting my ‘wonder why’ file of invented stranger profiles.

I cast a spell over the west to make you think of me, the same way I think of you

The “Spellbound Railway” series started back in November 2010. I decided to break the rules of the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) by taking a pre-existing story idea and writing past the 30 day deadline. I knew that I could write a 30 day, 50 000 word story, but I wanted this one to have the room to go longer and take more time than that.

I started with the idea of high school kids finding out that they could manipulate the world around them with their new magical abilities. It’s magic at the quantum level, nudging probabilities to create the effect they wanted. And if you try to explain exactly how your spell works or what your casting process is, your magic will stop working that way. This is loosely based on the quantum mechanics ideas : the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Observer Effect. And when I say loosely, I mean very loosely, because I am in no way a physicist.

The inspiration for the plot of the book came from the song lyric at the top of the blog post. I had the image of a very sad boy, standing on a rooftop with his eyes closed shut, desperately wishing for love in the way only a heartsick high school kid can. The end result of that process was WitchKids.

And the first book opened up a bigger set of questions. It brought in another quantum mechanics theory, the many-worlds interpretation. As I wrote the second book “Kingmaker” I began to map out the manifestation of many-worlds in my narrative universe, how the realities were structured and connected, and the effect that actions in one could have on the others. But even with the cosmic events in the background, there were still very pressing, immediate issues the heroes had to deal with, things that couldn’t get fixed with magic, like dysfunctional families and unstable romances.

And now we’re at the new novel “The patchwork Boy”. The heroes are reaching their final days in high school, teetering on the brink of being full-blown adults. And adult life is messy and unfair. I’m really in love with the story and I’m excited for everyone to get a chance to read it.

I hesitate to even think about the future of the series while I’m still slogging away trying to raise the cash to get the current book printed (here’s the link to the kickstarter, if you haven’t had a chance to back it yet to get your own copy of the new book pre-ordered). But I can tell you I know where the story is going, and it’s going to be a very bumpy ride for everyone involved.

When we dream of being more than what we are

A couple of things reminded me of the importance of art in our lives today. First, I was listening to the live tracks from The Hold Steady​’s 4 night stand at the Horsehoe tavern. When the crowd roared out as the songs began, I realized a live show isn’t about how successfully the artist reproduces the recorded version of the song. When it’s live, there will be missed notes, raspy vocals out of key, and unintended noise. But that doesn’t matter. A live show is about being in a room full of people who feel the same love for a song that you do. To be able to make eye contact with a stranger as the first few notes reach you, the tingling feeling shoots up through your body and the smile covers your face

The other one is sad but important. I hopped back on to twitter this morning and found out that the actor Leonard Nimoy had died. I was surprised that I felt a sense of loss from his passing, because he was “just a tv actor”. I struggled with finding the right words for my own moment of remembrance, because I was so dismissive of his contribution to pop culture and my life. But the way he brought Mr. Spock to life, the empathy and emotion he displayed in his character’s struggle, gave people, gave me, inspiration. The actor brings life to the words and makes something in their portrayal recognizable to us.

There’s no ranking system for passion and inspiration. If it moves you, encourages you, makes you think about being more than you are, it’s art and it is important.