As much as I love quotes from Eleanor, like Monday’s blog, today I find myself delving into a new world brought by characters I do not know very well yet. It is fascinating, because when I started working with Eleanor, she had been a character in my novels for years. So I already knew a great deal about her when she joined The Queen’s Pawn as the second narrative voice. And after writing To Be Queen, I feel that I know her that much better. So many layers of complicated emotion and thought…Eleanor is someone that I could write about for the rest of my life and never see all there is to know about her.
And now, for the first time in years, I am beginning to work with four new characters, none based on real people in history, just chracters who came to me with their story, hoping I can write it for them. I have no idea whether these new characters will stay long enough to write a novel…novel writing is an odyssey in itself, and the characters always have to be willing to work as long and as hard as I do. If we manage to write enough to begin another book, I hope to do them justice. When the dead come to us out of the darkness of the past, the least we can do is try to hear them.