Character Evaluation of Chasing Dragons: Vengeance: Uncle Emmett


I've decided to give insights to the characters of  my book, Chasing Dragons: Vengeance. A personal view of how I see each one and the land they live. It may help you to see what I see, or it may be an interesting difference in how your perspective is compared to mine. I will be writing one a day until each character has had his or her moment in the light.

Who should be first? A main character or a secondary, or the least important. Actually, each one is important. The one who seems the least may find they are the most later down the road. We shall see.


I think I shall begin with Uncle Emmett.

Uncle Emmett is always the busy man. Details only matter after the fact. It is these details that help him decide how things are to be. He keeps a keen eye out to those who interest him. The sun blared bright at high noon the day Olivia Sanders and her three young children stroll down the dirt road that would pass by his home. He was waiting for them. He knew they would come. What he didn't expect was the love that he would have for this young family that would become his own. How could he? Love left him long ago when his wife died. He is different than other men. Most would forget the painful loss of a spouse, some might have even welcomed it. And most assuredly, most men would find another woman and fill their days with her and not pine over their loss. Not Uncle Emmett. Part of him died with the passing of his wife. It was only when Olivia and the children came into his life that he noticed the loneliness that had filled the long, empty hours over the years. A single man with no family vanished that day, reborn to a man who loved a woman like his sister and her children as his own. When I say 'he knew they would come,' it is meant he knew there would come a day when his past would be reconciled.

He has a love for old myths. Particularly, dragon myths. He feels a wonderful sense of satisfaction when the eyes of a child light and stare at him in awe as he tells his tales when there was a day in their history that dragons once roamed beside them. And not just any dragon, but shape shifters. His most beloved story of all the dragon myths: Bayden and Esa. An ode to an unhappy ending to a very happy love story. He shares a close affinity to these two. Retelling what happened to them helps him to express his emotions that are wrapped up in his own loss of his wife. It is the only time that one is aware at how sad his heart really is. Otherwise he is a pleasant, jovial man.

Physically he has a bit of a limp, an awkward gimp as he travels. His hair, even his beard, are aged to almost white, but his skin hints he is not as old as he seems. And at times, his eyes twinkle as if he knows a funny story that no one is privy to. And sometimes they sigh a dull tiredness that he wishes everyone knew.

And if he has to, he will let his hand fall, releasing the secret that is his. He almost had to when the gloomers threatened them. Can you guess what it is?

Me is a full time job

Typical day: Wake up, go to work, come home, clean, laundry, run errands, get kids, take kids, fix food, clean, interact with kids (since they are mine), send everyone to bed, go to bed, and in the midst of all that, find the time to write, edit, promote, research, and finally.... breathe.

See? It's a full time job. And hopefully one day I will look back and say I accomplished something big, whether it is in the satisfaction of my children enjoying a good life because they learned their morals and values from me, more so from God, or also in that my writing career has shown fruit by my hard labor. It is a daily thing and a good thing. Everyone needs a reason to go through the everyday grind. It is even a better thing when it is spurred on by a labor of love.

We don't sell ourselves by standing still. We never have. Even as children we stared at the people over our mother's shoulder, batting our beautiful lashes while smiling when they smiled and talked to us without a single word of understanding. As the years progressed, we learned that a step forward and a hand held out gained the trust and friendship to those we reached for. Today is nothing less. Only technology has helped in the promotion of self. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, blog, blog this, blog that, email, gmail, thismail, thatmail, and on, and on. For some, it is for the self and the interactions of friends and people with like interests, while for others, it is the same with the exception of adding to the promotion of our own interests in the form of selling the world something we want them to have, intellectual or physical.

I'm sure in some form over the hundreds of years people have been around, this is nothing new, just the way we do it is. Tomorrow will probably involve even something greater and easier to share us with. So please forgive me as while I enjoy the interactions between friends and others of like minds, I will also benefit from exploiting my craft of writing and try to sell you something that while you may not need, in the end will be glad you have. Sit back and put up with my blogs, my twitter, my facebook and all the extras in order to communicate with everyone and sell you a story that I have spent much time with in between being me. 

Whatever is on my mind is what you get.

Aren't you lucky. If you were waiting with abated breath for something ingenious to spring forth from my mind, well, you are out of luck. I think I am just blogging out of writers block, trying to crack the safe to that elusive word to start the story flowing. Then again, I haven't opened my word processor yet. It is a little hard to begin the first word that way. Surfing and searching is taking up a lot of my time. You see, I'm still looking for the key to the secret to getting my first book noticed. Is it working yet? Nope. But then it has only been a month. That is what I keep telling myself. So let's just give you a little taste of my book sales. You may be here searching how other self-publishers are currently doing or reading several blogs posts to see how their journey compares to yours. My own journey at the moment is frustrating. Where I had some strong sales last month(my first month), I am now at a standstill. In other words, I have only sold one book since May took over. I am confused why. I could joke and say that I ran out of friends who could be bullied into buying it. Actually, my friends weren't bullied. Several of them have told me they loved my book and are waiting semi-patiently for the next. I've joined book blogs, scribd, and goodreads where both readers and writers read and swap reads or interviews. This is really a sweet idea and it not only allows me to introduce my book to people who may never have been exposed to it, but it also allows me to meet new people who are authors like myself, traditional or self-published. 

I hope you will find some use from this blog. Be sure to check back as I check back also on others in my own search for answers as I journey into the realm of self-publishing. I will tell you, that given the chance to have an agent who will help me travel that traditional road, I will hop on that train if, I mean when, it comes. As it is now, there is no way I will ever see my books in a brick and mortar store, and that really is my ultimate destination of my dream. There may be a little bit of pride in that hope, but that is just the way it is.

I just read another post on hash tags for twitter. #ya, #paranormal, #amediting, #amwriting. These are tags you can attach to your tweets. These tags lead to another twitter page where others with the same interests are tweeting hash tags themselves. Could be a bonus for promoting your book.

I'm still new to this, and everything and most everyone I search gives me hope for success. You may ask me why I went ahead and self-published. I did think about giving up after many rejections. The fact that I loved my story and several of my friends ordered me not to give in to the disappointment. The thing is, I didn't want to be eighty years old and wonder what could have happened if I would have just tried. I want to be eighty years old and know I tried whether I succeed or not. Hopefully succeed will be the word to tell my grandchildren and maybe great-grandchildren. Maybe I will be an example to them that they can do anything when they put their mind and determination to it.

Why do I write? These darn people won't leave me alone. I have been making stories up since I was a little girl. I always thought that in a few years, they would go away. These ideas that pop into my head can be pretty persistent. The next few years turned into the next few years and the next few years. Finally, I said fine, I will write you down. And wouldn't you know it, the people in the story didn't like how I was going and turned the story down a different road. No one told me they had a mind of their own.

So, there you have it. A lot of rambling about something and nothing about what's on my mind.

Tired

I've spent the better part of the day surfing the internet, searching for ways to promote my book and even learn from others how they went about getting their book out. It's long, tedious, and tiring. I did take a break and take my kids to Taco Bell. Well, it wasn't healthy, but at least it filled their bellies. I have another book I need to get back to. But as I've said before, I get focused on perfecting and since Chasing Dragons is still in its infancy as far as being sold goes, I had to divert and find it some love. It's a lot of work. I didn't realize how much time I would spend not writing, but staring at the computer screen, trying to find some magic formula that will grab the masses and tell them about a book they should really check out. I've spent so much time in the Chasing Dragon's world, I want everyone else to visit and fall in love. 

Let the Not Perfect be Perfect

I'm a little bit of a perfectionist. When I start a project, usually I am unable to begin another until I am done with the original. Sometimes that may mean a delay because I am busy perfecting. I don't like things unfinished or out of place. Strangely, in my own home, I can handle a mess or an item or two out of place. But for only so long, then it begins to irritate me and I go into a cleaning frenzy. Example: My Kitchen. If it's a little messy, I may leave it while doing another chore or just lazing around. But come bedtime, I cannot turn in for the night unless the kitchen has been cleaned: dishes washed, counter, stove, and refrigerator wiped down, and the floor swept. The thought of my kids waking to a messy kitchen really bothers me. The worst part of my home is the laundry room. Items seem to slowly grow and then boom. I can't handle it. Sort of like ants crawling across your legs at a picnic. Your hands start slapping at the little critters in order to rid your blanket of the growing infestation. That is how it is with me and cleaning. At work it is a bit of the same. I work for the post office at a carrier station. I sort letters mostly, flats and parcels are secondary; I fill in to help if my letters run out. Where my co-workers don't mind mixing letters and flats, and yes, some smaller parcels too, this just drives me nuts. For me, letters go in the letter case, flats in the flat case, and parcels in the parcel tubs. When I see a mixture, it bothers me to no end and I have to tell myself to let it go, because in the long run, a few out of place parts are unimportant. But, at that moment, it is huge for me and I have to give myself mental pep talks to walk myself through. Maybe I'm slightly OCD. I don't really believe that, it's just a little a tiny quirk. Alas, when writing a book and I find mistakes after countless proofreads, it's needless to say, I'm irritated because I worked so hard to make everything perfect, and now it's not. Sometimes we have to let things go and allow the not perfect to be perfect.

FOR THE LOVE OF A BOOK

I know, it's crazy, right? I should have already sold thousands if not hundreds of thousands of ebooks and paperbacks. Right.... Well, it has only been a month. I sold enough to say maybe my friends and family bought them. Which does make me smile to think they are supporting me. What I really want is to do is to sell enough to compete with Harry Potter and Twilight. Don't think I'm not kidding. Who in their right mind wouldn't want to. Seriously, when it comes right down to it, I want readers to buy and fall in love with my books. I don't want any comparisons, unless they are with the others in the series. My favorite author is Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. The first book I read of hers was The Flame and the Flower. It is still my favorite and I have read it so many times I couldn't tell you a number. I still can visualize her scenes and words in my head as if I were reading it at this moment. That is what I want. For the reader, even ten years or more down the road, to be able to close theirs eyes and see the words they once read with such love. Even after I'm dead and gone.