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Interview with Jax from Wind River 1/5/2014 12:54:47 PM
Recently, I did a presentation to a group of middle school aspiring writers. We were discussing the inspiration and character development for my family friendly “Backyard Horse Tales.” In my search for a subject for this post, I chose to share a bit about my character development for “Wind River Refuge.”
My heroine needed to have an internal conflict to overcome to face threats on her life, and stand up to her dominating male counterpart. One of the techniques I use is to interview my character. You would be surprised what pops out. Note: nothing from this interview is repeated in the book; it is only a character study.
Character Interview:
Q: Jax is an unusual name. Is there a story behind it?
Jax: By little brother, Bobby, was just learning to talk. He couldn’t pronounce my given name, so he called me Jax. The name stuck, that’s what my family called me from then on. That is who I am!
Q: You seem a bit agitated about my question.
Jax: I went through several years of verbal abuse from my aunt over my nickname. It was her opinion that the name wasn’t lady like, but neither was I.
Q: I see that you have a juvenile record, and spent two years in a detention facility. Was it an awful experience?
Jax: Lock up was the only place that I’d felt safe in years. Girls were kept in a different section of the prison from the boys. All the guards, medical staff, and teachers were women. We ate at regular hours, showered everyday, had designated exercise periods, and we went to classes to keep up our educations.
Q: Did you have any trouble with other inmates?
Jax: No there were a lot of others with similar backgrounds. Most of the others sort of tread lightly around me. The gossip was that I had killed a man and would be in the penitentiary if I were a few years older.
Q: But, Jax, you didn’t kill your abuser.
Jax: Well, that was just luck. Whoever it was that circulated the story really kept the hardcore gals from messing with me.
Q: Were you aware that your grandmother was working on an early release and change of venue for you?
Jax: I knew she had her attorney working on it, but I never held out much hope.
Find out how Jax ended up in juvenile detention and why fate chooses her to solve an unspeakable string of crimes.
I took some time away from writing, editing, and revising a few days ago. Finally, I completed the author interview on Smashwords. The link to the interview is included in the following list. Take a look, wadd any questions you would like answered on my email. I will do my best to answer them in a timely manner.
