I read
Forever and a Day (click here for review) and loved it so I asked Ann Gimpel if she would do a guest post on how she did her world building. She agreed. Keep reading to see what she had to say.
Creating a Setting for Your Characters by Ann Gimpel
Thanks so much for inviting me and Forever and a Day to your blog! I appreciate the compliment.
I’d love to say I use the same process for every book I
write, but I don’t. Many of my books begin with an image, or series of images,
that form the basis for the book. I occasionally begin with an empty world, and
it tells me what kind of characters it needs. I’ve only rarely begun with a
character and formed a world around them.
In Forever and a Day,
the world came to me first. Maybe I’ve always been a closet James Bond fan, but
the world of international espionage fascinates me. I’d written a short story
about Miranda, a wolf shifter with a double life. Super spy by day and wolf by
night. Juggling her identities is a necessary challenge, since the humans are
unaware of shifters in their midst. Anyway, that’s how The Company Store Series was born. Miranda’s Mate was the first book and Forever and a Day, the second.
One of the things I love about urban fantasy, as opposed to
high fantasy, is it’s set in the “real” world. No odd names for things. No
triple moons transiting the sky. My favorite urban fantasies feel so real, they
could actually happen. That hunk living next door could be a closet Celtic god,
who’s really been alive for millennia. Or a mountain lion shifter who’s jetting
off to Europe to track a dangerous adversary. That being said, even urban
fantasy needs magic systems that are consistent. Nothing annoys me more than
characters who can do everything as an author lurches from one convenient plot
twist to the next.
Let me tell you a secret. I’m wretchedly old-fashioned. We
lost something when our lives got very easy. There’s not much challenge left
anymore, unless we create it. I think that’s why I’ve had a lifelong love
affair with traveling the backcountry with a pack, where I have to rely on my
wits. I’ve been cold, lost, and out of food, but I feel ever so much more alive
when I get back to civilization.
I give my characters similar challenges. They need wits,
creativity, and courage to survive to the next chapter, let alone make it to
the end of the book. That their worlds hold tests and trials ups the ante.
How about the rest of you authors out there. Do you create
characters first, or worlds? Or do they come to you as a unit that refuses to
be separated?
About Forever and a Day
Urban Fantasy
Espionage
operations and runaway love travel halfway around the globe as Tamara and Lars
stay one step ahead of death. Tension heats to boiling, but it’s not half as
hot as the attraction licking at their heels.
Book Description:
Tamara MacBride has a much bigger problem
than hiding her shifter side from the world. By the skin of her teeth, and with
a smattering of Irish luck, she manages to kill her sister’s murderer. Escaping
from the scene of the crime is proving much harder than she anticipated. Just
when she thinks she might be safe, her cab driver shrieks and slumps over the
wheel. She cowers in the back seat, too scared to run, expecting the next
bullet will be for her.
An unknown assailant terminates Lars
Kinsvogel’s target. Pleased by the outcome, after all dead is dead, Lars
exchanges the glitz of Monto Carlo for a nearby airport intent on collecting
the private plane he left there. He’s no sooner arrived when a cab jumps the
curb. His instincts blare a warning, but Lars ignores them and trots over to
investigate. There’s not much he can do for the cabbie, but his passenger is
still very much alive—and absolutely stunning. It takes some tall talking, but
she agrees to come with him.
Espionage operations and runaway love
travel halfway around the globe as Tamara learns to accept her shifter side,
and Lars embraces what’s been missing from his long life. Initially reticent to
trust one another, it takes a series of crises and a near-fatal accident for
them to take a chance on love—and each other.
Excerpt:
Lars Kinsvogel sucked in an annoyed
breath. Anxiety and greed thickened the air in Monte Carlo’s Place de Casino,
and he stifled a choking sound. Damn his hypersensitive shifter senses. If it
weren’t for them, the desperation hovering around him wouldn’t be quite so
palpable. Casinos were always like this, though, a haven for the rash and
reckless. What had likely begun as a harmless pastime turned into hardcore
addiction for an unfortunate few, forcing them to return again and again
despite diminishing returns.
Hope springs eternal. All the poor sods
need is one more spin of the wheel, another hand of cards… Lars looked up,
right into the croupier’s beady gaze.
“Would monsieur like to place a bet?” The
croupier grinned with all the warmth of a hammerhead shark, displaying a
mouthful of bad teeth. What was it with the French and their aversion to
dentistry? Lars shook his head and made shooing motions with one hand. He’d
have to either join the baccarat game soon, or move on, but he could get away
with loitering for a few more minutes without drawing undue attention to
himself.
His target, a powerfully built man with
Asian features revealing his half-Chinese ancestry, had an arm slung around a
striking brunette. Maybe she was one of the hookers who worked the casino
circuit, maybe she was a steady thing for the man. Lars considered it and
decided she could be both. Around five feet eight, she had a lush, curvy body,
hair cut into a stylish bob that fell a few inches past her shoulders, and
memorable eyes the color of a restless ocean. A short, black sheath hugged her
like a second skin. Open nearly to her waist, it displayed half her full
breasts. Even though Lars’ appraisal was surreptitious, he forced his gaze
elsewhere. The woman was sex incarnate, and he didn’t need anything diverting
him from his objective.
Jaret Chen pressed chips into his
companion’s hand and urged her to pick a number. He gave one of her breasts a
familiar squeeze, which earned him a smile, perfectly rouged lips stretching
over impossibly straight teeth—and a slight shake of her head. Color stained
her tanned skin. Lars realized he was looking at the woman again, wondering how
her breasts would feel beneath his fingers. She seemed uncomfortable with
Jaret’s frank exploration of her body, so she probably wasn’t a pro. For some
unexplained reason, Lars felt relieved. The woman was too elegant to earn her
living lying on her back.
He snorted to himself and studied the
flashing display above the baccarat table. Maybe the woman wasn’t French. That
might explain her perfect teeth—and her discomfort with having her body mauled
in public. At least she held Jaret’s attention. So far the drug dealer hadn’t
spared him so much as a sidelong glance. Lars had never met the man, but knew a
great deal about him from an extensive dossier provided by The Company, Lars’
international security employer. Deeply involved in the heroin trade from the
Middle East, across the Mediterranean, and into Europe, Jaret was one of the
principals in a large operation—and Lars’ current project.
He sized the man up. Maybe six feet, he
had a barrel chest. Strongly muscled arms strained against the fabric of his
cream-colored silk dress shirt. His art deco tie had been loosened. Dark eyes,
pronounced cheekbones, and straight dark hair cut short blended with his
business attire. For all intents and purposes, he was indistinguishable from
the phalanx of wealthy—and wannabe wealthy—men circulating through the casino.
Lars glanced at his own cream-colored silk shirt and black linen pants. With
the exception that his tie was still firmly knotted, he and Jaret were dressed
as twins.
Guess neither of us wanted to stick out
in anyone’s memory.
Lars glanced at his Rolex. Close to
midnight and time to move on. He’d seen enough. Now it was a matter of figuring
out where and when to strike. These things always went more smoothly when they
were nearly invisible. He melted into the crowd and made his way outside. The
casino fronted the French Riviera; Lars stood looking out at the Mediterranean
for long moments. The water was quiet tonight, waves barely slapping the white
sand beach. His cell phone, set on silent, vibrated against his hip, and he
tugged it from a pocket to look at the display.
Private. Damn! Could be anyone.
Lars punched the answer icon, held the
phone to his ear, and waited. No need to say anything until he knew who was on
the other end.
“Are you somewhere you can talk?” Lars
inhaled sharply as Garen LeRochefort’s voice came through the phone’s speaker.
Another shifter, Garen had founded The Company hundreds of years ago. The
mechanics of the spy game had changed drastically between the late seventeen
hundreds and modern times, but the basics—kill or be killed—hadn’t altered
much. Everyone who worked for The Company was some type of shifter. Lars’
animal form was a mountain lion, Garen’s a wolf.
Lars loped farther down the beach until
he cleared several couples engaged in deep, hungry kisses. “What has happened?”
Something must have, or Garen wouldn’t have risked contact.
“You need to leave.”
“But I have not—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Garen cut in. “I’ll
explain when you’re back in the office on a fully scrambled line.”
Lars thought about his twin engine Piper
Seneca waiting at the Nice airport, fifteen miles from Monte Carlo. It gave him
freedom to come and go, and was much cheaper to operate than the business class
jets he also owned. “Maybe I could still—”
“No!” The one word thundered so loud,
Lars moved the phone away from his ear. “Don’t even go back to your room.”
Garen hesitated. “Old friend. Trust me on this.” The line went dead.
Lars stared at the iPhone’s display and
dropped the cellular device back into his pocket. He’d been compromised. He
wasn’t certain quite how, and a part of him was curious as hell. He kept
walking, swinging in a wide circle to head back toward the Hotel de Paris.
Garen had said not to return to his room, but if he were careful, maybe he
could learn something critical that would help their side.
“Ja, forewarned is forearmed,” he muttered.
Keycard in hand, he let himself into a side door of the rambling old structure,
got his bearings, and started cautiously up a stairwell. His suite was on the
second floor, at the very end of the wing facing the Mediterranean. He’d always
loved the old hotel with its thick, patterned carpets and antique lighting and
furnishings. Staying next to the walls, he used a bit of shifter magic to cast
a don’t look here spell. It wouldn’t keep someone determined from seeing him,
but it didn’t require much magic, either.
He entered the second floor a few doors
from his own and scanned the empty hallway, his senses on high alert. Midnight
was early in Monte Carlo, a city where people frequently stayed up through dawn
and slept the day away, so he fully expected to see other guests, but the hall
was mercifully empty. He padded silently toward his door and examined it,
wishing he’d set a trap. He inhaled, trying to sort scents, but there were too
many to make sense of. He could leave, just walk away like Garen had almost
ordered him to, but Lars had never been a coward, and he was more intrigued
than frightened. He’d spent years worming his way out of dicey situations. This
was just one more, and he was damned if he’d walk away from his things. Not
unless he had to.
He took a deep breath, tugged his
guaranteed-not-to-set-off-metal-detectors .32 caliber revolver from its ankle
holster, and shoved the key card into the slot in the door. A tiny electric
motor hummed and the deadbolt snicked out of the way. He turned the latch,
kicked the door open, and turned from side to side scanning the sitting room of
his suite, gun at the ready. Lars waited in the doorway, barely breathing, and
then he heard a muted click, followed by an unmistakable whirr, and knew.
A bomb.
He cursed in German, not knowing if he
was more annoyed with the turn of events or with himself for not taking Garen’s
advice and getting the hell out of there.
Publisher: Taliesin
ISBN: 978-1-62916-065-8
Release Date: 7/3/14
About the
Author:
Bio:
Ann Gimpel is a clinical psychologist,
with a Jungian bent. Avocations
include mountaineering, skiing, wilderness photography and, of course,
writing. A lifelong aficionado of
the unusual, she began writing speculative fiction a few years ago. Since then
her short fiction has appeared in a number of webzines and anthologies. Her
longer books run the gamut from urban fantasy to paranormal romance. She’s
published over 20 books to date, with several more contracted for 2014.
A husband, grown children, grandchildren
and three wolf hybrids round out her family.
@AnnGimpel
Teaser Tuesdays
