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ibonekoenDay 24 - Where did you draw inspiration for the setting/story from?
This is definitely an OOC question, lol. Where did I draw inspiration for the setting? Well, that's easy. I live two hours south of Orlando, Florida, and I've been going to Orlando since I was a kid. I have family that lives in the area, and I (briefly) went to college at UCF. When it came to finding a location for the story, I wanted that big city feel without the clichéd locales of New York and LA. So, Orlando was a logical choice.
The plot idea has been developing piece by piece over the last two years. The novel initially started out as Zander struggling with his ability, and there was this vaguely thought-out plot of ghosts from the Underworld trying to break free and take over our reality and only Zander could be used to open the portal and it...was...just ludicrous and not well-planned at all. So I scrapped it.
Since then, it's kinda become this fluid thing that keeps changing. Right now, it's shifted to a struggle for Joseph. He's presented himself to Zander as this really nice, totally humanesque guy who just happens to drink blood, but there's a darker, more spiteful side to him. Alessandro comes in and completely knocks the top off the bottle holding all of Joseph's "grrr argh" tendencies, and Zander learns some not-so-nice things about Joseph's past that make him very O________________O!
Then, of course, Joseph has to deal with that and Zander's just crushed because his childhood hero has been tarnished. So a main focus of the novel will be gaining back the trust that was lost.
Inspiration for the characters, that's simple. I'm a visual person, and call it a crutch if you like, but I base my characters on photos first. I pick a face and I build the character around that. I've heard it said that you're supposed to build the character's personality and back story first and then worry about the appearance later, but idk, I can't do that.
Anyway, Joseph was created in or around October, Novemberish 2009. He was originally intended for a PSL (private storyline) between![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
likesthesilence and me. Joe Jonas is (one of) the love(s) of my life, so naturally he was my first face choice. In his first incarnation, he was a prince based on Balthasar Charles, the eldest son of King Philip IV of Spain. He died at the age of 16 from smallpox. Perfect backstory for a vampire, right? A member of his court was actually a vampire and the young prince endeared himself to said vampire, who turned him before he died. Wee!
So I went off on a quest to find pictures of Joe where he looked princely and found these that you see here. It was right after Joe got his haircut and went from gorgeous curls to what you see, but it oddly kinda worked for Joseph, so I went with it. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't very clever in the naming of my character, but I really like the name Joseph, okay? XD
What made me decide to make him a candidate for the New York Yankees? Well, that's a very good question, and one that I blame solely on the fact that Joe and his brothers have a team, the Road Dogs, and they played softball games before their world tours in 2009 and 2010. Which gave us the wonderful pictures you see of him in uniform.
Okay, so maybe this was just an excuse to show off pictures of my guy, whatever. :P Anyway, for whatever reason, when I started writing Bright City Bites, I decided to forgo the princely back story and create a new one for Joseph, making him more contemporary. Somehow it made sense to make Joseph a starting third baseman for the New York Yankees, and I'm a sucker for tragic stories, so I killed him before he got a chance to play. Oops. XD
Zander... Like Joseph, Zander was originally created for an RP, though he was in an actual game on GreatestJournal, back when it was around. He was a bartender on a cruise ship, lol. That incarnation couldn't talk to ghosts though. He was just your average 25 year old doing the Cocktail thing on the open seas. He's better looking than Tom Cruise though.
I've been playing with the idea of a character who can communicate with the dead since I wrote this little piece. The idea'd been swirling in my head for a while about a ghostwalker, a person who can walk through both worlds, living and dead, and he uses this ability to find murder victims and help solve the crimes of their deaths. I'm sure this isn't innovative or new; in fact, I'm pretty sure this is somewhat close to the plot of Ghost Whisperer? I dunno, I've only seen a couple of episodes in reruns.
Anyway, Joseph needed a best friend for some Odd Couple type shenanigans, and Zander needed something to make him fit into a supernatural world, so he became my medium of sorts.
As far for Alessandro, well, I'll let his creator,likesthesilence, tell you that. :D
And that is, as they say, history.
Onto Days 25 & 26
This is definitely an OOC question, lol. Where did I draw inspiration for the setting? Well, that's easy. I live two hours south of Orlando, Florida, and I've been going to Orlando since I was a kid. I have family that lives in the area, and I (briefly) went to college at UCF. When it came to finding a location for the story, I wanted that big city feel without the clichéd locales of New York and LA. So, Orlando was a logical choice.The plot idea has been developing piece by piece over the last two years. The novel initially started out as Zander struggling with his ability, and there was this vaguely thought-out plot of ghosts from the Underworld trying to break free and take over our reality and only Zander could be used to open the portal and it...was...just ludicrous and not well-planned at all. So I scrapped it.
Since then, it's kinda become this fluid thing that keeps changing. Right now, it's shifted to a struggle for Joseph. He's presented himself to Zander as this really nice, totally humanesque guy who just happens to drink blood, but there's a darker, more spiteful side to him. Alessandro comes in and completely knocks the top off the bottle holding all of Joseph's "grrr argh" tendencies, and Zander learns some not-so-nice things about Joseph's past that make him very O________________O!
Then, of course, Joseph has to deal with that and Zander's just crushed because his childhood hero has been tarnished. So a main focus of the novel will be gaining back the trust that was lost.
Inspiration for the characters, that's simple. I'm a visual person, and call it a crutch if you like, but I base my characters on photos first. I pick a face and I build the character around that. I've heard it said that you're supposed to build the character's personality and back story first and then worry about the appearance later, but idk, I can't do that.Anyway, Joseph was created in or around October, Novemberish 2009. He was originally intended for a PSL (private storyline) between
likesthesilence and me. Joe Jonas is (one of) the love(s) of my life, so naturally he was my first face choice. In his first incarnation, he was a prince based on Balthasar Charles, the eldest son of King Philip IV of Spain. He died at the age of 16 from smallpox. Perfect backstory for a vampire, right? A member of his court was actually a vampire and the young prince endeared himself to said vampire, who turned him before he died. Wee!So I went off on a quest to find pictures of Joe where he looked princely and found these that you see here. It was right after Joe got his haircut and went from gorgeous curls to what you see, but it oddly kinda worked for Joseph, so I went with it. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't very clever in the naming of my character, but I really like the name Joseph, okay? XD
What made me decide to make him a candidate for the New York Yankees? Well, that's a very good question, and one that I blame solely on the fact that Joe and his brothers have a team, the Road Dogs, and they played softball games before their world tours in 2009 and 2010. Which gave us the wonderful pictures you see of him in uniform.Okay, so maybe this was just an excuse to show off pictures of my guy, whatever. :P Anyway, for whatever reason, when I started writing Bright City Bites, I decided to forgo the princely back story and create a new one for Joseph, making him more contemporary. Somehow it made sense to make Joseph a starting third baseman for the New York Yankees, and I'm a sucker for tragic stories, so I killed him before he got a chance to play. Oops. XD
Zander... Like Joseph, Zander was originally created for an RP, though he was in an actual game on GreatestJournal, back when it was around. He was a bartender on a cruise ship, lol. That incarnation couldn't talk to ghosts though. He was just your average 25 year old doing the Cocktail thing on the open seas. He's better looking than Tom Cruise though.
I've been playing with the idea of a character who can communicate with the dead since I wrote this little piece. The idea'd been swirling in my head for a while about a ghostwalker, a person who can walk through both worlds, living and dead, and he uses this ability to find murder victims and help solve the crimes of their deaths. I'm sure this isn't innovative or new; in fact, I'm pretty sure this is somewhat close to the plot of Ghost Whisperer? I dunno, I've only seen a couple of episodes in reruns.
Anyway, Joseph needed a best friend for some Odd Couple type shenanigans, and Zander needed something to make him fit into a supernatural world, so he became my medium of sorts.
As far for Alessandro, well, I'll let his creator,
likesthesilence, tell you that. :D
And that is, as they say, history.
Onto Days 25 & 26