Characters Are People Too

Trying to be a bit more active on my posts, but . . . ah, well, life intrudes. That being said, I thought I would offer a brief profile of the main character in each of my series. I think the reason each generated a second (and even third!) book is because each is on a voyage of self discovery and maturation in some facet of who they are. Perhaps it would be simpler to explain by example.

Jack Watson -- Grew up poor but his family came into large amount of money which then vanished in the face of his mother's cancer. Raised to be proper, concerned about appearances, honest and ethical, he joined the Chicago Police Department and moved up the ranks to detective. Later events caused him to leave the CPD and become a private detective. He's good at solving mysteries although he doesn't consider his talents to be anything more than hard work mixed with good breaks. When it comes to women, however, he has problems. He doesn't understand the need for games, trickery, and subterfuge in relationships, and when he finds himself on the receiving end, it results in confusion and sometimes annoyance or anger. Once he found the love of his life, he started reevaluating his relationships and his direction in life. It's an ongoing journey.

Tracy Wiley - A tomboy from Fort Lee, New Jersey, she lost her mother and brother in a car accident when she was just coming into adulthood. Her father suffered a near-fatal heart attack over the same event, and Tracy gave up all her future plans to take care of him. She set up barriers against making emotional attachments so that fate could not take anyone else away from her again. She stopped making plans so those could not be taken away either. Then she met Alex Laughlin who had the determination to fight through her barriers, and she fell in love. But a decade of hiding from relationships left her a bit backward in handling them. While she can always find a quick, clean solution to other people's problems, she still has problems with her personal life.

Stefanie Durant - An artist with an eidetic memory coupled with severe learning disabilities, Stefanie is also blessed/cursed with the Ken, a precognitive talent to know about tragic events before they happen. Her childhood was pure hell, and all she really wants is to fit in and be like normal people. Her husband, Paul, is a genius and an insurance investigator, a totally practical man who finds it hard to accept the uncanny. While they both accept that they may have lived and loved in an earlier century, their powerful bond in the present gets them through the odd events that find their way to Stefanie through the Ken. After years of holding her precognitive talent in check, its reawakening launches her into a search for understanding of who she is and what the Ken can do, but she must balance that against the potential for giving up the normalcy she long sought.