Characters on the Couch: Aidee Ladnier's Charlotte

Today we get to meet Charlotte, aka "Charly," the other half of the paranormally talented duo from Aidee Ladnier's ongoing project.

India Eisley, Aidee's visual model for Charlotte (from Aidee's Smudges Pinterest page)

Character Two name: Charlotte (Charly)

Age: 16

Gender: Female

Species (if applicable): Human

Cultural or historical context (if important to the story, e.g., if it's a Regency): Modern day teenager, American South

Brief description and relevant history: 

Charlotte's parents have just divorced and she and her mom have moved in with her great aunt. Although bullied at her last school, she's still angry to be moved away from everything she's ever known. Her mother offers to help her remake herself for her new school and Charlotte adopts the name Charly and tries to remake herself as the perfect, popular girl. She begins hanging out with the popular crowd but she's drawn to Miranda. And when she's around Miranda she hears voices. Then when they touch, suddenly both of them can see the echoes Miranda sees only they don't repeat actions but instead interact with the young women (like their touch completed a psychic circuit). Miranda represents everything scary to her, gifts she doesn't understand, a sexuality she's not comfortable with, etc.

Where you're stuck, or why your character needs a psychologist: 

I feel kind of backed into a corner with this character. She has every reason to stay away from the other character and I'm uncertain how to build the bond between them.

Follow-up questions:

The relationship between Charly and her mother is potentially a huge area to explore. Does her mother help her reinvent herself because she wants to help or because she wants her daughter to be “normal”?  

I think her mother helps her because she wants her daughter to have the best. She's willing to take on two jobs in order to pay the credit card bill to pay for Charly remaking herself. She feels guilty for uprooting her daughter but after her divorce, they literally had nothing and so her mother retreated back to her family support system. Charly has family all over town but doesn't realize it at first.

Having every reason to stay away from Miranda is a good basis for a romance novel character. What do they have in common other than unusual talents and homosexuality? Is that why Charly was bullied?

Miranda is a painter and is volunteered by one of her instructors into doing set painting for the school play which Charly is one of the minor players in.

Has Charly had any unusual experiences before she met Miranda that could be related to their talent?

When she's around Miranda she occasionally hears whispers and voices. This alarms her that she's possibly having auditory hallucinations, but as soon as she connects with Miranda she realizes that she's actually hearing the same component that Miranda sees. It's a little harder for her to tune out, and starts to cause some anxiety. They quickly learn, though that once the circuit is complete, the spirits last thought is completed, their last words finished and their last breath breathed. They can move on.

What does Charly want from life? What does she fear most?

Charly wants to be accepted. She joins every club and extracurricular activity she can when she's enrolled mid-year. Her idea is that the law of averages will mean she'll meet someone she can be friends with. She's afraid of being lonely. Her mother is always at work, her aunt is really old and comes from an alien (small town) culture, and Charly's afraid of being alone.

And for the relationship – what does Miranda have that Charly envies and vice versa? Mother/lack of mother relationship could be huge here.

I think Charly's envious of Miranda's ability to buy or do or go anywhere she wants because her family has a lot of money. Charly's mom is barely making it, forced to move in with family in order to survive. Initially, I think Charly's a little willfully ignorant of her mother's finances, but it slowly becomes more worrisome for her. She sees Miranda as having everything she wants and not wanting it.

Cecilia says:

Common values and interests are a great force of attraction to other people. When clients talk to me about wanting to find a partner or even to meet new friends, I encourage them to put themselves in situations that will allow them to meet people with the same interests repeatedly. Think about your involvement in Southern Magic. I’ve found several good friends through Georgia Romance Writers because we have a common interest – writing – that helps us “get” each other.

Both of your characters want the same thing – acceptance. It doesn’t look the same at first because they’re doing opposite things to gain it. Miranda, who wants to be accepted by her family, is in avoidance mode, and Charly is actively pursuing it with all her activities. Gradually coming to recognize it and realizing that they actually do understand each other on a deep level will be a great romantic arc to your story. It also sounds like they have the potential to connect at first through artistic pursuits, again with Miranda being more behind-the-scenes and Charly pursuing the spotlight, but both involved in the drama department.

The desire for acceptance also provides a good basis for conflict because it will also get in the way of them pursuing their helping the spirits cross over. Even in a place that has stories like The Ghost in the Field, people who actually have that kind of talent are often shunned. Thus there needs to be something positive they can connect over on a deeper level. I can see your characters having arguments as to whether they should continue with this spiritual work, but both of them having a noble reason to continue. For Miranda, it’s wanting to help her best friend cross over. Perhaps Charly can discover something that could help her family finances, like a treasure hidden in her great aunt’s house that one of the smudges knows about. That brings up a different value – altruism, or whatever else you’d like to call it.

As for Charly’s internal conflict, her primary conflict emotion sounds like anger hiding fear. The relationship with Miranda has the potential to gradually give her the sense of security she wants if she can overcome fear and envy, which will cause her to push Miranda away at first, and learn to focus on what’s truly important to her.

Thanks so much for bringing the girls by, Aidee! I enjoyed analyzing them. These are fascinating characters, and I look forward to seeing how this story turns out.

If you have a character you'd like help with, please send me a message through the contact form (upper right on page) or email me at cecilia (at) ceciliadominic (dot) com

About Aidee Ladnier:

Aidee Ladnier began writing fiction at twelve years old but took a hiatus to be a magician’s assistant, ride in hot air balloons, produce independent movies, collect interesting shoes, and amass a secret file with the CIA. A lover of genre fiction, it has been a lifelong dream of Aidee's to write both romance and erotica with a little science-fiction, fantasy, mystery, or the paranormal thrown in to add a zing.

You can find her on her blog at http://www.aideeladnier.com or on her favorite social media sites.

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Character on the Couch & Guest Post - Cecilia Tan's Ziggy

I'm excited to welcome bestselling and award-winning author Cecilia Tan back to the blog today with her character Ziggy of the Daron's Rock Chronicles series. Volume 7 dropped, er, launched on Tuesday.

First, let's hear from Cecilia why she decided on the fascinating setting of the 1980's rock scene:

Why Rock Fiction?

I've been writing Daron's Guitar Chronicles since the 1980s, when I was a teenager living in the suburbs of New Jersey. MTV was new then, and nonstop music videos brought visions of David Bowie, Prince, and Siouxsie Sioux right into my suburban den. These are the visions that saved my life, the guardian angels who told me through their songs and their mere existence that there was something else besides the crushing conformity of suburban life. Rock and roll called to me as a lifeline.

I was always the "weird kid." Even when other kids didn't know WHAT was weird about me, they knew I was different. I just couldn't conform enough to their idea of normal. Teachers called me "creative," but didn't really know how to support my overactive imagination: no one lets you write fiction instead of a book report. (I confess: Mr. Mantegna, that book I said I read about the silver condor in fifth grade? I totally made that up.) To protest the tyranny of the "fashionable girls" I started wearing a Han Solo costume to school, complete with blaster strapped to my leg. To me the idea of being a rock star would mean I could wear whatever the heck I wanted--spandex? a unicorn horn? a tuxedo?--and people would love me for it instead of bullying me. Rock and roll, to me, has always been about the outsider becoming loved instead of reviled.

In Daron's Guitar Chronicles, our hero is a talented guitar player who dreams of escaping suburban hell in New Jersey and making it big (sound familiar?). When his story starts he has made it as far as music school in Rhode Island. Daron has a lot of challenges in his way, not the least of which is he's scared to death people will find out he's gay. Heck, Daron is scared to death of BEING gay. He fears not only that if his sexuality is exposed it will prevent him from having a successful career, but on a deeper level he fears intimacy.

Enter Ziggy, the lead singer Daron's band needs to succeed, but what relationship is more intimate than being a partner in creative pursuits? Writing music together, performing it live, and bonding as bandmates gives Ziggy far more access to Daron's head and heart than Daron realizes. 

Some see Daron as having two quests, one for artistic success, one for romantic love. But really it's all one big quest for love: from the fans, from the men in his life, and from himself. 

So why rock fiction? It's the perfect vehicle for me to explore the inner workings of my poor angst-ridden heroes and the ways they push against conformity. These boys aren't going to live in a suburban box. They can't. They'd die, creatively and spiritually if not actually, if they were forced to be "normal." And I get to explore all the issues about love and acceptance in a giant metaphor (the music business) for how damaging love can be. Like the Bowie song says, "And when the kids had killed the man, I had to break up the band."

Oh, and did I mention the story is set in the 1980s? I started writing it then and when I started publishing it in 2009, instead of updating it to the present, I kept it in the era of AIDS, Just Say No, and Silence=Death. In 1986 the "alternative rock" revolution hasn't happened yet. And neither has the gay "coming out" movement. So that's yet another way I get to equate rock music and love outside the mainstream.

It's all one giant addictive tapestry of garage rock, arena shows, basement rehearsals, tour mishaps, friendship, love, and art, told through the eyes of a musician who has as much to learn about life as he has to learn about himself. 


Daron's story is now seven books long--volume seven in the series releases today [CD note - er, Tuesday]!--and the web serial continues over at http://daron.ceciliatan.com. Readers have told me they find the series deeply entrancing. Daron becomes like a best friend to many, so talented and beautiful and flawed, you want to root for him to succeed day after day. 

If you want to cheer him on, too, book one of the series is free right now on Amazon and Smashwords, and the full chapters of the entire serial can be read at any time on Wattpad or on the Daron's Guitar Chronicles home site. 

Thank you so much, Cecilia! This sounds like a fascinating series, and I can't wait to meet the characters in depth. Let's start with Ziggy, who's this week's Character on the Couch: 

1. If your character were to go to a psychologist – willingly or unwillingly – what would bring them in? Yes, a court order is a valid answer.

Ziggy has a rocky history with psychologists. He was sent to one as a teenager and ended up in bed with the guy, because seducing people is the way Ziggy gets the upper hand in any relationship. (CD - Oooh, nightmare patient). Now, though, he's in his mid-twenties and he's a successful pop star. You'd think he'd be happy, but he isn't. The pressures of fame and his mother's recent death have been gnawing at him, as is his broken relationship with his former guitar player/partner, Daron. I think he goes to see a psychologist because he wants an impartial judge, someone who has no investment in whether Ziggy's ego gets bruised or not. (CD: Okay, that's better)

2. Is the presenting problem one of the main internal or external conflicts in your book? If so, how does it present itself?

The weight on Ziggy's back is guilt. Ziggy has always put himself first before other people. He grew up somewhat underprivileged but doted on by his single mother. However, she died while he was out of the country, on a spiritual retreat to India he didn't even tell her he was going on. He has nightmares that she died alone, that she died from worrying about him. He also feels very guilty that the breakup of Moondog Three, the band he and Daron founded, is his fault, and that he screwed Daron's career by going solo. At this point the guilt itself might be so overwhelming it might prevent him from making amends.

CD: This is great multilayered internal conflict! (takes notes)

3. It's always interesting to see how people act when they first enter my office. Do they immediately go for my chair, hesitate before sitting anywhere, flop on the couch, etc.? What would your character do?

Ziggy saunters in like he owns the place, full of self-possession, and even smiles because he wants to seem friendly. He's optimistic as he shakes hands: he wants help, and he loves talking about himself, so this should go swimmingly, right? He kicks off his electric blue boots and sits crosslegged on the couch in a half-lotus.

4. Does your character talk to the therapist? How open/revealing will your character be? What will he or she say first?

Oh yes, he loves to talk, especially about himself. But he guards his heart, too, so I expect he might talk a lot about little things at first, "winnable" battles. But eventually he'll say, "Look, I've read some Freud. I know I've got some kind of Oedipal complex going on. I'm absolutely haunted by my mother right now."

5. Your character walks into the bar down the street after his/her first therapy session. What does he/she order? What happens next?

Ziggy orders a cosmopolitan and stares into it, playing with the cherry on the end of the toothpick but not drinking it. Then over the top of the rim of the glass he makes eye contact with someone. Doesn't matter if they're male, female, married, single, alone, or there with friends, he'll be having sex with them in under two hours, guaranteed.

6. When you're building characters, do you have any tricks you use to really get into their psyches, like a character interview or personality system (e.g., Myers-Briggs types)?

Characters like Ziggy have a lot of layers. I know them very well the moment they pop into my head but it takes time for all their twists and turns to be revealed. That only happens when I "play test" them, i.e. through real writing of the scenes they're in. That's how you find out how they'd really react or what they'd relaly say. Ziggy is full of surprises and yet they all add up. Just for fun I put him through a Myers-Briggs test online and he came up ENFP, same as what Frost, the last character I sent to your couch came up with! I hadn't realized I liked that type so much!

CD: It's funny how we gravitate to certain types like that. I tend to write introverted intuitives. It would be interesting to research whether we tend to write types closer to ours.

So, once again, if you'd like to meet Daron and Ziggy (and I definitely do!), here are the links:

New book: Daron's Guitar Chronicles volume 7, launches August 4, at Amazon: https://amzn.com/B00ZN34BEK

First volume of Daron's Guitar Chronicles is free at:
Amazon 
Smashwords 
The full chapters of the entire serial can be read at any time on Wattpad or on the Daron's Guitar Chronicles home site.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cecilia Tan is the winner of the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award in Erotica and the author of over a dozen novels. Her forthcoming January 2016 novel from Hachette/Forever, Taking the Lead, pairs a bad boy rock star and a Hollywood heiress with a secret.

Character on the Couch: Cecilia Tan's Timothy Frost

I am so very excited to welcome author Cecilia Tan and her character Timothy Frost to the couch today. Timothy is a character in her Tales from the Magic University series, which is definitely on my TBR list. She reveals what makes Timothy tick and talks about the series below.

Spellbinding: Tales from the Magic University 

by Cecilia Tan

With contributions from Deb Atwood, Lauren P. Burka, Julie Cox, Rian Darcy, Sarah Ellis, Elisabeth Hurst, D.K. Jernigan, BriAnne Searles, and Frances K. Selkirk

Goodreads Page

1. If your character were to go to a psychologist – willingly or unwillingly – what would bring them in? Yes, a court order is a valid answer.

I imagine Master Brandish probably *did* send Timothy Frost to a psychologist after the events of Magic University: The Tower and the Tears, and probably she had to threaten him with expulsion or academic probation to force him to go. I imagine the conversation went something like this:

Brandish: If you won't tell me what happened between you and Kyle, you have to talk to *someone* about it.
Frost: Do I? If it's against the law to keep secrets you'd best lock me away now and throw away the key.
Brandish: (pained) You know that isn't what I mean. In fact, that's the point. Talk to someone impartial, who'll keep your secrets as a professional.
Frost: A professional what?
Brandish: Psychologist. Here. I've got just the one right here in my contacts.
CD: Note to self - Get in Brandish's Rolodex.
Frost: (sneering) You can't make me.
Brandish: As your house master, I most certainly can.  

2. Is the presenting problem one of the main internal or external conflicts in your book? If so, how does it present itself?

Frost's hangups are definitely central to the book series and the unfolding quest for true love. Our hero, Kyle, has fallen in love with him, a consequence of some very powerful sex magic that the two of them worked together in book two. Frost refuses to speak to him, though, because he fears intimacy. Frost has many secrets, about both his past and his prophesied future, and although he's actually powerfully attracted to Kyle, too, he thinks the only way to keep himself safe is to keep Kyle out of his life. In SPELLBINDING, there are a few short stories about Frost that tell the reader Frost's secrets, but he's still trying to keep them from Kyle! Among them: Frost was born female but was magically transformed male at age 10, and before that was sexually abused by his uncle.

3. It's always interesting to see how people act when they first enter my office. Do they immediately go for my chair, hesitate before sitting anywhere, flop on the couch, etc.? What would your character do?

Frost would slink in like a feral cat, cautious and silent, eyes scanning everywhere, and then once he's sussed out the room, stride haughtily to chair, sit, and stare down his nose at you. He'd barely move a muscle once he was sitting down, though, holding himself very rigid, very controlled.

4. Does your character talk to the therapist? How open/revealing will your character be? What will he or she say first?

I would say he is not very open, and yet some of his wounds are so glaringly obvious that even when he tries to hide what he's feeling, he won't completely succeed. I find it not unlikely that as the therapists asked questions he might lie outrageously and make up stories, though, spinning fabrications that probably tell the therapist plenty about him, but still avoiding the things he holds close to the vest. If the therapist asked him why he was there or what he was there to talk about, here's the answer you'd get:

"Did Brandish tell you anything about me? Only that if I don't do this I'll never graduate? Fine. This all goes back to what happened between me and Michael sophomore year. Michael has a streak of sirenic blood, which give him incredible telepathic powers while he's having sex. Best sex of your life, really. It becomes an addiction. But he was addicted to me, too, to feeding off my sexual energy. Sirens can be ravenous, though, and he went into a feeding frenzy of a sort, leaving me in a coma and effectively ending our relationship in the worst possible way. I've already been through magical addiction rehab. Perhaps you'd care to pick up the pieces from the psychology angle? Not that there are any pieces left of my shattered heart big enough to pick up without tweezers."

CD: Note to self - Stay out of Brandish's Rolodex. Don't have competency in magic injury recovery.

5. Your character walks into the bar down the street after his/her first therapy session. What does he/she order? What happens next?

Hm, if this was right after The Tower and the Tears, Frost's still only 20 and therefore not old enough to drink alcohol. So he goes into The Russell House Tavern, gets an isolated corner table in the dimly lit downstairs dining room, orders a cup of hot tea, and then cries into the crook of his arm for fifteen straight minutes. He never remembers to take the tea bag out of the hot water.

6. When you're building characters, do you have any tricks you use to really get into their psyches, like a character interview or personality system (e.g., Myers-Briggs types)?

When characters come to me, they pop fully formed out of my head and the way I dig into their psyches to find out more details is by writing the novel they are part of. A complex character like Frost also inspired several short stories and I'm so blessed my publisher went along with my idea of having a short story collection be part of the Magic University series. Sometimes I later take the Myers-Briggs as my character, or I do associative storytelling using Tarot cards. Frost is an INFJ in the Myers Briggs system: strongly altruistic but also highly sensitive to criticism and deeply private. He has a secret crusade and he will let no one dissuade him from it.

CD: I do that, too! And INFJ is my personality type. I can relate.

Thank you so much for being here! This new addition to your series sounds absolutely fascinating and with something for everyone.

When lovers meet, it's magic--literally--when your characters are studying at the Magic University and erotic magic is the most powerful of all. In these 17 short stories featuring characters from Cecilia Tan's Magic University LGBT new adult romance series, erotic energy heals wounds, lifts curses, bonds some people together, and tears some people apart. Tan and a merry crew of nine writers explore the intriguing secondary characters, unanswered mysteries, and background stories of Veritas.

Spellbinding includes 7 stories by Cecilia Tan--including two never before published!--and 10 by authors and fans she invited to come "play in her sandbox." The stories range from fanciful "what ifs" to explorations of the backgrounds of characters we don't fully learn in the course of the main novels. Through these tales we see Frost's rescue as a child, the tumultuous relationship of Dean Bell and Master Brandish, what Kyle did on his summer vacation, and much more. Representing a range of sexualities, the stories include lesbian, gay, bi, and heterosexual pairings.

The Riverdale Avenue Books edition of Spellbinding will be the first in paperback and contains two never-before-published stories by Cecilia Tan. Any lover of magical erotic fiction will find much to enjoy, and any fan of Magic University will find these stories revealing.

Excerpt:

Michael and I met in Enchantment class. We were lab partners; is that a cliche? How do most people meet their first boyfriend?

I suppose most people have already met their first boyfriend by the time they are in college. But remember, I was raised by wolves. At first, anyway. I'd actually spent my teen years living with two nice old ladies who were happy to foster a magical foundling, just a few blocks from the campus of Veritas. From no protection at all to overprotected, in other words. Neither one is conducive to dating.

Michael and I were both wide-eyed and quiet as church mice that first semester, though perhaps part of that was no one wanted to upset Professor Cross. She was a brute when it came to practice and homework and grading on a curve. Fail her class and you could forget being an enchanter.

"Put your hand in mine," Michael said in a quiet, quiet voice. We were sitting facing each other, working on an exercise from the syllabus. Around us everyone was paired off and doing the same thing, while Cross stalked up and down, looking for mistakes or lack of focus. He held up a hand, his palm open.

I hesitated for a moment. Physical contact wasn't something I'd had much of in years. It wasn't something I'd ever remembered wanting, and since moving to Cambridge, it had never been forced on me.

This wasn't forced, though. It was an exercise for a class. Michael's eyes were large and round and expectant.

I put my hand in his.

It was all downhill from there. 

 Cecilia Tan is the recipient of the 2014 Pioneer Award and the Career Achievement Award in Erotica/Erotic Romance given by RT Magazine. She is not only the author of the Magic University series, but also Slow Surrender, The Prince's Boy, Daron's Guitar Chronicles, The Hot Streak, Mind Games, and many other books and stories. Susie Bright called her "simply one of the most important writers, editors, and innovators in contemporary American erotic literature." Tan was inducted into the Hall of Fame for GLBT writers at the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival in 2010. She and her partner corwin (and their three cats) live in Cambridge.

If you're a published author who would like to send a character over to my couch for a profile or an unpublished one who's struggling with a character and who would like help from a psychological perspective, please fill out the contact form to the right.