Character sketch - hero

What’s below is copyrighted--I have to say this, because it’s in process and probably part of my contract with my publisher.

I still haven’t quite figured out what the hero of my next book is like. But since I seemed to be able to flesh out the heroine on this blog, I’ll try it with the hero.

So, his name: James Martone. I don’t want him to be all tortured and dark, because I don’t think he is. But whenever I visualize him (dark haired, grey-eyed) he looks rather grim. I don’t know what makes him so....

I don’t think it’s because he’s a werewolf (although you might naturally think, what’s not to be grim about that?), because he doesn’t become one until after he comes to Ireland. In addition, I don’t think he knows he is one. All he knows is that he has strange dreams and wakes up in odd situations, not remembering where he’s been. Or he’ll wake up with a lot of muscle soreness, though he’s not done any physical work the day before.

I’m thinking he’s basically just a serious sort. He’s one of the Marstones: they’re psychic in various ways, although their powers grow very strong if they’re put through some trauma. I think being cursed into becoming a werewolf is a sort of trauma, but I’m not sure if it’s enough of one to spur the growth of the Marstone powers. I’m not quite sure if I want him to have a good amount of psychic powers right off the bat or not. Maybe, maybe not.

I think he might have had occasional visions as child, and thus felt set apart. Went to Eton, where he was bullied dreadfully, and then treated as a weirdo when it was discovered that his visions came true. So I think he retreated a bit into himself, became a loner, and learned to defend himself physically when needed. And something tells me he left Eton--with a great deal of relief--when he came down with chickenpox, and then was tutored at home, until such time he went to...I’m thinking Cambridge. He was still reserved and watchful, though a good student, never letting on that he has any psychic gifts, and even not liking those gifts, because they set him apart. His visions keep him from feeling normal, something he wants very much. I think he must have been told in Eton that manly men don’t go pale, look as if they’d faint, and see visions. He’s compensated by becoming quite athletic and a great boxer.

He does have a good model in his father, but his father’s psychic gifts are not great--no more than having a sensitivity to animals, and so has become a great horseman and breeder of fine cattle--so he feels it’s not something his father can understand.

So...I’m thinking that he’s inherited a somewhat ruined castle in Ireland--possibly through his mother--and once he hears about it, needs to go there to manage it. The estate’s in pretty good shape, but the last lord of the estate was oppressive and cruel, and his estate manager was a crook. So now James has to go in and fix it. Thing is, he’s been told by the manager plus letters from the old lord that the farmers and villagers were a villainous, recalcitrant lot, and so James goes in thinking that he needs to be firm with the village and farm folk.

Which of course is precisely the wrong way to be, because they’re going to hate the old lord’s replacement, thinking that James is going to be yet another English oppressor. He sees the problems of poverty and finds out that the estate manager is indeed a crook within a month--James is not stupid, after all, and he fires the estate manager. But by that time, the damage is done, and he’s got to slog his way through getting the rebellious servants, villagers, and farmers to work with him. And of course, the way they treat him is reminiscent of the way he was treated as a child, so it just makes him retreat and become a very cool and reserved English lord, which does nothing to fix things.

Even worse, as lord of the estate, one of his jobs is to be a magistrate. Not a popular job at all. Increases the resentment. He tries to be fair, but it doesn’t matter what he does, it’ll be seen as wrong, wrong, wrong. And when Mary Kate’s brother Brian is implicated in the blowing up of munitions at a port, he’s the magistrate that has to figure out whether Brian is innocent or guilty.

Oh, now I know how James gets together with Mary Kate! James quickly figures out Brian’s innocent, but he knows he needs someone respected on his side. He’s seen Mary Kate, but doesn’t believe that such a woman has the wit and cleverness he needs. So he acts the oppressive Englishman that everyone expects him to be, and he says he’ll free Brian if Mary Kate can solve a riddle, but part of the bargain is for her to be his wife as well. Yeah, he’s fallen for her, and he can’t think of any other way of getting her, and is frankly cursing himself for blurting it out, because he sure as hell didn’t mean to say it. But once he’s said it, he can’t take it back.

And of course Mary Kate feels that she has no choice about it, because isn’t that horrible Sassenach of a Marstone sure to execute her brother otherwise?

All right. I think this will work. Because I think it puts a lot of obstacles in the way of a relationship, and because Mary Kate is a lot more clear-seeing than most, she saw from the beginning that James isn’t as bad as the villagers make him out to be, English or not. But the incarceration of her brother, plus feeling that she’s forced to marry James is a huge set-back. And then there is the whole werewolf thing. I’ve got a good ironic, possibly even tragic twist on that one, but I’m not going to reveal it here. Oh, and I believe I know who has cursed James, but that’s another thing I’m not going to reveal. It’s not who you think. ☺

You know, I think this story has just a bit of the movie “The Quiet Man” in it. I don’t see James as John Wayne, but it is about being accepted into a community and coming to understand it, and overcoming divisive attitudes.

(Happy sigh.) Not too bad for an evening’s work.