My Characters Suck

Well, the vampires do, at least.

I've just renamed a few of my characters in the third book. I had to give them some name to work with, and now that I've found some better names to give some of them I have done so. I used my Find and Replace in Edits to change the names of two characters. I had one named Verdilak. It was a cool name, but I had too many characters' names that began with a V. Vasyl is one, and even though Drakulya is called Drakulya, his other name is Vlad. Too many V's, see? So I re-named him Skrlock. A strange, but memorable name. I tried different spellings:

Scurlock

Scirlock

Scerlock

Then I thought, why put a vowel in there at all? and why not a k instead of a c ?

So I got Skrlock.

And I still couldn't keep from holding on to the name Jett for the main male character. It just fits him. However I had to rename the blood broker of Arabella's from Raven to Alucard. I also changed his looks, and personality, and whole character, really.

The other day I saw this dude walking down the street. Just the back of him, his long hair flopping over his back, it came to about his shoulder blades. The color is hard to explain, but it was like he had equal amounts of gray running throughout his darker hair creating a new, unusual color. I never saw his face, which was fine, but his hair, unfettered, and tall and trim caught my writer's interest, and thought he'd make a perfect vampire. I guessed he was in his 40's. I was hoping to see him again while driving the bus, but didn't. Maybe I will another time, this summer while I'm driving across town.

So, seeing this dude I was able to go back and decide on honing the description of one character that looked just too much like Jett. I felt I had to because I decided to do a scene with Alucard today. Struggling to get Sabrina into a place where she would be poised for the final segment: The Climax of the book.

I like what I came up with for Alucard, and where he fits in this. And this climax scene is burned in my head, and although I want to get to it, I'm working toward it instead. I could just write it, and get it over with, get it done and out of my system. But I've got a week off coming up and want to give myself that time to work on it then. I hope by July something I'll have the first draft of this third book done.

Plus I came across the description of an Astral Vampire, and found that it fit perfectly for a character that has to change drastically, in this book. I'm sort of excited about having found it, because it was on a sheet I'd printed out months ago, and I just came across it. Having worried about what this character would become, after all the things that go on, which I can't even discuss because I'm not ready to write anything about it, what with the second book, Vampire's Trill about to come out this summer.

Well that's all for this update.