So, in the past, I’ve put pics up of characters. Usually, I don’t use pics of real people or anything. My characters just pop in my head and look, well, how they look… I have a friend who looks on the internet for character ideas, but that doesn’t work for me. I did see that one pic for NaNo in ’09 and said, ‘there’s a character in that girl. she definitely has a story to tell.’ But that’s the only time.
I’ve been working on The Abandoned Edge of Avalon (which I realized I’ve announced that it’s being published just about everywhere But here … except for the sidebar, but that doesn’t count.. but it WILL tell you who’s publishing it!) for almost a full two years now — (*read note about this fact at the end*). It’ll probably be released within weeks of the two year *anniversary* of when it was first created. Wait … so wouldn’t that be birthday?? Eh, doesn’t matter..
My point is, I’ve never come across anyone or anything that reminded me of Alexis. I just know her in my mind.
That is, until I was in Walgreens last week waiting on a Rx…
And I saw her. So I took a picture. Actually, I took a few. Good thing she’s inanimate, but even if she hadn’t been, I still probably would have taken one!
My friend, Kim, saw her MC, Megan, at the bus stop or train station or somewhere like that in London (she lives there..) and she didn’t get a pic. Her book, The Border Lord (which I’ve read in its entirety and better get published soon b/c it’s That Good!), is an urban fantasy about a kickass teenager who falls into a crazy adventure (sounds generic, like it’s like all UF, but I promise it’s not!). Anyway, Kim saw Megan once and probably won’t ever see her again. 
I would have either snuck in a pic or, if she was leaving/moving, I would have asked for one. (I don’t care much about bothering people lol j/k … sorta..)
So anyway, here’s Alexis::
Yes, she’s a Moxie Girl, aptly named Lexa lol
Alexis isn’t exactly trendy … in fact, she just kind of does her own thing, but I saw this doll and I saw my girl.
My next post about Alexis will list some of her traits of the poster board I made from her character sheet Forever ago when I started the book.
After seeing these pics and reading about her a bit, you might be surprised at the fact that I lied earlier … I have seen Alexis once before. A couple months ago, I saw her in Target — and THIS is what she looked like (but not a vampire!) — so it kind of shows she might go through a bit of a transformation over the course of the novel… 
But I promise she’ll still always be sweet and ditzy — most of the time….
her eyes are green, though, not blue…
**oh yeah, about it taking 2 yrs to finish my first novel. I read A LOT about how agents hate seeing that because it looks like it’s been out there forever.
Now how is that fair to assume that?
People do have lives that prevent them from writing. They have writer’s block. They have other projects they’d rather work on. And on and on…
for me, there are a lot of reasons it took 2 yrs.
a) i rearranged my chapters and then had to put them all back how they were — that took about 6 wks, at least … probably more.
b) i’ve mentioned this before … i didn’t write for a LONG time because i wasn’t allowed to. so, rather than make my life miserable, i chose not to write.
c) i learned TONS during those years and built up my platform. if i hadn’t learned different things about writing and spent the time researching that i did, there’s NO WAY my book would have had offers on it. not a chance. people liked it at first, but probably only because the story was good and i don’t make many grammatical errors because i’m ocd 
but it needed to be tightened and written right
d) revisions — editing — beta readers — this stuff takes time!!! so yeah, if someone has your book for a month and gives you a ton of feedback and then you correct what you will based on that feedback, then another reader, then another, um. that’s a long time…
ALL I KNOW is that when it boils down to it, most likely if the book’s been “out there” for 2 yrs, that doesn’t mean it took 2 yrs to write or that it’s been on sub for that long or even that one has been querying that long.
for me, when i figure it all out, i think i *maybe* worked approximately 6 mos on the book. which one friend told me was “wayyyy too early” to be querying at that point. but it wasn’t because the learning experience of the other year and a half made a world of difference.
so that’s my two cents (or fifty…)
