Book Title: ONCE PERSUADED, TWICE SHY Character Name: Emmie (supporting character)   How would you describe your family or your childhood? So. Many. Brothers.   What was your greatest talent? My boss Anne is always talking about my “Machiavellian impulses,” and I’m like 73% sure she means that as a compliment. I would also be great at firing people, if she ever actually let me do it.   Significant other? Pft, Peter wishes! But no.   Biggest challenge in relationships? Ensuring that they find my quirks endearing, and not, y’know, frightening. I’m an acquired taste, although I seem to be a fan favorite with early readers of ONCE PERSUADED, TWICE SHY. Go figure!   Where do you live? The town of Niagara-on-the-Lake! It’s disgustingly cute and I love it.   Do you have any enemies? So many! But I’m hoping to accumulate more. You’re not important until you have enemies plotting against you. Top of the list right now is someone whose name I’ll withhold for spoiler reasons, but she’s a lying traitor and I hope she’s eaten by wild Canadian geese. Seriously, they’ll eat anything.   Oh, also there’s one particular Canadian goose who hangs around our office, yeah,…

Classic characters never really stay put, do they? Well, who can blame them, a couple hundred years stuck between the same paperback covers might make anyone a little stir crazy, even if you’re hanging out at amazing manor homes like Pemberly, Hartfield or (a pre-burnt-to-the-ground) Thornfield Hall. I think that’s why these classic characters like to stay on the move; they may travel through different ports – traversing the Wide Sargasso Sea to a new bookshelf, or channeling a Beverly Hills teenager on the screen – they may tangle with Zombies, fourth-wall breaks, and evolving modern values, but they find their way into present-day, over and over again, and so many writers are there to help them along, finding new scenes and new forms for them to inhabit.     I didn’t consciously intend to be one those writers, but Jane Eyre had other plans when I spotted her sitting in a cubicle in my office, glancing nervously at Mr. Rochester’s closed door across the hall. Inspiration struck – and exhaustion struck because when you start to see fictional characters walking around and using the photocopy machine maybe it’s time to take a vacation and get out of the office…