Wednesday evening, 63° and clear
Listening to My Morning Jacket, Grab a Body

This morning my daughter Charlotte, who is away studying agriculture at Michigan State University, texted some images to me. She’s currently reading  State of Love & Trust and was inspired to draw this story’s characters. This got me thinking about the keys I use when describing fictional characters.

A little backstory: I have always written, and Charlotte has always drawn. I still have the first person she ever drew, which looked like a smiling potato with stick arms and legs. That was pretty impressive detail for a two-year-old.

Throughout much her childhood I’ve been working on one novel or another, and the roots of State of Love & Trust go back to when she was still in elementary school. She always asked if she could read my story, and I always said yes … when you’re 18. But as it happened, I put that manuscript away for a lot of years and began polishing it for publication shortly after she’d left for college.Continue Reading Character Drawings