Kimberly Gardner

I blogged the other day about the new story I’m working on and gave a little peek at one of my heroes. That same day I began writing the opening scene of the story, that all important First Meet.

I had what I thought was a pretty decent idea of what I wanted to happen, how I wanted to get my boys together. So I sat down at the keyboard and I started writing.

It took me only 1,500 words or so to realize that the tone of the scene was totally wrong and that Zach was not putting his best foot forward for me. (Just as an interesting, to me anyway, side note, because I never plot any story beyond the vaguest notion of what will happen in the next scene or two, it often takes me thousands of words, numerous scenes and chapters, to figure when a story isn’t working. If I’m lucky, like with Gift of Eros, some of that early writing can be tweaked and reworked and may actually turn out to be usable. Sometimes not. This time is one of the *not times.)

Then this morning I began again with the same first meet scene, except this time I wrote it from the pov of the other hero, an adorable little blond named Keith.

I can already tell that Keith (last name still unknown) is going to be one of my sweeties, an agreeable character who shares his thoughts with me and tries to do what I need him to do in order to make a scene work. These boys, if they were real, would be worth their weight in gold especially when you compare them with the annoying characters who just turn their backs and clam up. Tempramental little suckers. *g*

It’s characters like these, my sweet boys,  that make the writing fun, that keep the words flowing and my spirits high. There’s one in every story. Val was my sweetie when I was writing GOE. In my as yet unpublished novel, Phoenix Rising, it was Adam. In this story, tentatively titled Sugar in the Raw, I have high hopes for Keith.

Now if he’ll just tell me his last name …