Interview: Dodging Eros

SYNOPSIS

When is love a safe haven, a shield or a launch pad? When is it a mine field or a trap?

Dodging Eros, Through Past, Present and Pleasure is something different about love.
Cupid is not simply a cherubic prankster.
Cupid is a tireless hunter. He’s dangerous.
While men and women bait and lure each other into the tricky gauntlet of attraction, Cupid circles, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Siblings Danya, Monica, and Warwick Fullerton come from a family tradition of love that endures. They understand the risks and rewards of loving and being loved, but the intersection of the politics of pleasure with the evolution of 21st-century society versus entrenched ideas about who is expected to love whom challenges them to fight for their beliefs, which differ from their parents’ ideas.
Dodging Eros uses the early 20th-century past as prologue about the present day to frame the generational shifts in the risks of loving and being loved as the Fullertons confront their personal demons and battle The Fellowship, a secret society of power brokers conceived during the era of U.S. Prohibition now expanded into a modern international network of corruption.

Character Development Easy or Daunting Task

Who? What? When? Where? How? Why?

For me, character development happens organically as the story unfolds. It’s almost always the idea of a specific kind of person who is dealing with a particular set of circumstances that motivates me to begin a new project. Dodging Eros sprang from my thoughts about how modern women’s access to higher education, professional success, birth control, and financial independence affects their options in romantic relationships now compared to previous generations.

Throwing in the variables of social class, ethnicity, and geographical location offered a wide variety of paths to explore. Once I’d decided on a beloved daughter who was the youngest of three siblings, Danya materialized along with her family, then the rest of the cast evolved from there. Fleshing out my characters based on their circumstances is an enjoyable challenge for me. Their backstories are usually developed backward from their present situations. Creating their histories leads to research online and in the public library. Those facts germinate in my brain for a few days before being incorporated into my imaginary world and refining my characters’ physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual facets.

Writing at my own pace means there are no looming productivity deadlines beyond my personal mandate of writing five or six days each week, which keeps me from being overwhelmed by external timetables. That lack of outside pressure supports my artistic freedom.

Ultimately, character development falls midway between being easy and daunting for me due to my enjoyment of the task and my goal of making every member of the cast engaging for readers.