Joann Buchanan has stopped by the blog today for her tour of I Am Wolf! She's done an interesting guest post and shared her links. Enjoy the read and be sure to follow her via her links and on the rest of the tour! Each new stop will be posted on her Facebook page every day.
Writers, as a group we are neurotic at best. We always ask ourselves why one book is doing better than another. We seem to become obsessed with numbers out of the blue and without a doubt the notebook we carry around always looks like it has been put through the wash and dried in the sun. We watch the world and see characters in our books. We see traits, like the way a person walks or talks as part of a character we create. For the most part, we are observers of the most basic human things that make us human. No matter the genre, we are without a doubt the neurotic observers of life.
I live on one of the only streets that goes straight through the town. Five blocks down there is a set of railroad tracks. Just next to the tracks stands an old dilapidated building that at one time was used for cattle. Time has done what it does to all things of the world, it has eaten it. Not all at once mind you, but little by little time has had a scrumptious meal of metal and wood. What I imagine was at one time, a beautiful building, has now become a cat refuge. The building is full of rusted holes, broken glass and yes, time even ate the smell of the cattle and replaced it with that pungent smell from all the cats that now call it home.
Every day, a woman named Mrs. Carrigan drives over to the cat refuge in her new green Buick and parks in front of the building. She opens the door to step out. First, all a person can see is her puffed out silver hair that stands taller than my hand. Dear God I thought the 80's were over, but they live on in Mrs. Carrigan. She walks to the back of the car and opens the trunk. From there she pulls out bags upon bags of food, treats and other cat friendly things.
After a few days of watching her feed the cats, I noticed that she always wears a jean jacket. This jacket is decked out in rhinestones that say, "Cat Lover" followed by a bit of bling strategically placed on the jacket. Upon further observation, I see her license plate says the same thing.
As a writer, I can't help but think, "Damn I am so going to use her in a story some time," and I did. We are neurotic in all we see and do. We can't help ourselves but write what we see and yes write what we don't see. We can't help but take characters in our lives and form a story around them. As writers we are the shadows between the pages. We are the monster hiding in the mist and we are the love that soars to new heights. We live in worlds that don't exist . . . and we love it.
The observation is the key to our life blood. It is what makes those characters we love and hate. The characters we create are all around us. They live and breathe as surly as you and I. So when I say writers are neurotic, I mean we can't help ourselves when it comes to seeing the world the way we do. Hell you might want to be careful around a writer--or you may end up the pimple faced kid in a book who is slaughtered, but not without making you piss yourself first. What can I say, I'm a writer.
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I Am Wolf is a fantastic read and so is Joann!
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