This week we celebrated Daphne Huntington-Smythe’s birthday.  She’s one of our two main heroines in STRANGLED BY SILK & we realized that to us, she feels real, flesh & blood, just like the rest of our characters & it gave us much thought about what goes into creating the people in our world.

The Poppy Cove Mysteries are strongly character driven; the stories colored with details of plot & description.  We started with the concept of a cozy murder & our victim was born, ironically just to die.  Still, we needed to know her background & why it would happen, her behavior, her experiences & nature.  Then the heroines who would solve the mystery and become our amateur sleuths.  The two of them would have a long term presence & relationship, & each be distinct enough to be their own people, but have enough in common to be copacetic.  They need to balance & bring things out in each other in a realistic & believable manner.  Then comes the suspects & a supporting cast of characters, some one offs, some continuing, evolving & growing as anyone does.

We have reams of paper, binders of details regarding birthdays, places, milestones, characteristics, both physical & emotional, of where our people have been & where they’re going.  Also, their hobbies, interests & passions for people & things, as well as their strengths & shortcomings, as they tell them to us.  The learning curve itself is fascinating, with the art of consistency being its own challenge.  The more we get to know the Santa Lucians, the more the stories unfold, telling us where they go from here.

Thank you all for your interest into our world.  Sharing these people with you makes the process complete.  If you like what you’ve read here, be sure to check out STRANGLED BY SILK!

Toodles,

Barbara Jean Coast

aka Andrea Taylor & Heather Shkuratoff