{"id":455,"date":"2015-05-04T20:32:35","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T20:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/?p=455"},"modified":"2015-05-04T20:32:35","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T20:32:35","slug":"abrielle-the-fearsome-crafting-characters-for-the-long-haul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/abrielle-the-fearsome-crafting-characters-for-the-long-haul\/","title":{"rendered":"Abrielle the Fearsome: Crafting Characters for the Long Haul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, my comedic fantasy story, “Lemonade S\u00e9ance,” was released in Hysterical Realms<\/em>, a new anthology<\/a> from Strange Musings Press. Here’s the quick promotional blurb, which will explain\u00a0the tale\u00a0in pithier terms than I otherwise would:<\/p>\n

Invoking the powers of hell is never easy, especially for an eight-year-old girl\u00a0looking for revenge. Fortunately, for Abrielle, she has the perfect secret weapon to court demons from beyond: a fresh pitcher of homemade lemonade. Now if only she can keep her parents from discovering she’s messing with the dark forces again…<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lemonade<\/a><\/p>\n

The release of “Lemonade S\u00e9ance” is a bit of a hallmark for my writing career, seeing that it is the first of the Abrielle stories to make its way in the literary world. Who’s Abrielle, you might ask? She’s a pint-sized, hell-raising\u00a0character I created last fall–almost by accident–and she’s since appeared in three of my stories (technically four, but I’ll explain that in a moment). Although it’s the first to be released, “Lemonade S\u00e9ance” is\u00a0chronologically the second Abrielle tale with the first being\u00a0“Miniature Home,” a darkly\u00a0funny\u00a0coming-of-age, complete with thunderbirds,\u00a0that will make its debut\u00a0later this\u00a0month on the newly revamped site and podcast for The Breakroom Stories. The third story is still out in circulation, diligently seeking a home, so I am hoping to have some announcement on that front in the coming months.<\/p>\n

\"Hysterical<\/a>Still, as excited as I am about Abrielle now, I never had any intention of creating a character who would make repeated appearances in my fiction. It seemed like a lot of work that could cause potential confusion among readers who were unfamiliar with previous installments. Thus, as a writer, you’re tasked with making something\u00a0succeed as a standalone piece while simultaneously incorporating elements from previous stories (as well as establishing the groundwork for future tales). If that’s not daunting, especially for a writer who’s only been in the professional short story business for about a year, then nothing is.<\/p>\n

But as characters are wont to do, Abrielle forced her way into my life, first appearing in a story I wrote last November. In that yarn, which never quite earned a title,\u00a0Abrielle was only a supporting character, the niece of the protagonist. Ultimately, the\u00a0untitled\u00a0tale simply fell apart, lacking any sense of cohesion and miring itself in too many scenes and too many characters. As a writer, it can be a great disappointment to admit defeat, but when you know a story isn’t working, sometimes the best thing to do is retreat for the moment. Maybe some day I’ll get back to it. Or maybe I won’t. That’s part of the business, albeit one of the more disappointing parts.<\/p>\n

However, out of that defeat came Abrielle. She’s a sprightly little thing, undaunted by supernatural forces or her\u00a0alternatively\u00a0neglectful\u00a0and overprotective parents,\u00a0which means\u00a0she’s certainly not scared of being\u00a0born from\u00a0a story that never went anywhere. I don’t write comedy nearly as often as I’d like to, but Abrielle gives me the inspiration to do it a little more often. I can’t say that I know quite where she’ll take me, but I do know that I’m eager to go along wherever\u00a0she and her atlatl-toting goblin pet take me.<\/p>\n

So after a rocky start, it’s a real honor that Abrielle and her foray,\u00a0“Lemonade S\u00e9ance,” found a home in Hysterical Realms<\/em>. Editor Giovanni Valentino gathered stories from some of the best genre writers out there, including Deborah Walker, Ken MacGregor and Gerri Leen who\u00a0was featured on my Author Spotlight series<\/a> last month. Sharing such a storied table of contents is quite an achievement for a pigtailed character who almost never existed in the first place.<\/p>\n

Happy reading!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, my comedic fantasy story, “Lemonade S\u00e9ance,” was released in Hysterical Realms, a new anthology from Strange Musings Press. Here’s the quick promotional blurb, which will explain\u00a0the tale\u00a0in pithier terms than I otherwise would: Invoking the powers of hell is never easy, especially for an eight-year-old girl\u00a0looking for revenge. Fortunately, for Abrielle, she has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","tag-strange-musings-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":468,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455\/revisions\/468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}