a guest post by Britt Lind
I think one of the most important things you can do when writing a book is to know your characters on a deep and profound level. Because I was an actress for so many years this came naturally to me when I began writing Deception as it has for every book and script I’ve written. Both of my characters Josh and Rosemaria were based on people I know. But when you do that, you can’t limit their thoughts and actions to how these real people will behave.
You have to go beyond the real people and use your imagination, knowledge, and instincts to delve into your characters’ minds and their hearts. Make notes, think about them, question them as you would real people, understand their motivations and their shortcomings and all their foibles. Let them come to life naturally as you live with them for weeks or months.
Do this with your antagonists as well. Understand why they do the bad things they do. Look into their backgrounds and try to find reasons why they went down such a bad road. All of that may not be in the book but you have to know them to write them. When you prepare in this way and have a solid story arc and ending, your characters will take off and all you have to do is type really fast to keep up with their actions and often be surprised at what they come up with that you never expected or planned.
The battle between good and evil is ill-defined in the land of Hollywood. Rarely do kind, compassionate souls win the spoils of war which makes their rare victories all the sweeter.
Josh Sibley, singer/songwriter, is handsome, talented, smart and headed for oblivion. Alcohol provides relief when his demons threaten to overwhelm his every effort to break free of his past. When his friend Jennie Seger arranges for him to write songs for a multi-million-dollar feature, all his doubts and fears fall away, and he embraces the opportunity like a starving man who has found a bounteous feast during a famine.
Lightning strikes his lonely heart in the form of singer/actress Lila Levy who is married to the producer of the movie and flaunts her sexuality at Josh knowing her breathtaking beauty more than makes up for her lack of talent. Knowing his love for Lila is doomed from the start, he overlooks her shortcomings and keeps his feelings under wraps as he teaches her to sing his songs.
But this is Hollywood, and nothing is as it seems. Lila has secrets that Josh cannot begin to fathom and doesn’t want to know. When her husband Stan is murdered, Lila disappears and Josh is confronted by the woman determined to track her down – Sergeant Rosemaria Baker of the Beverly Hills Police Department. Rosemaria is the opposite of Lila; she hates show business and considers Josh a delusional loser. When the cops track down Lila and bring her in, Lila declares herself innocent and the fight for the soul of Josh Sibley begins.
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About the Author
Britt found out she had a passion for acting, singing, and writing as early as grade school. While attending junior college in Monterey she was discovered by Clint Eastwood when she was playing the lead in a dinner theatre play in Carmel and was cast in Clint’s first directorial effort Play Misty for Me. A few years later, Britt headed for L.A. to attend UCLA and to start her acting career. She obtained featured roles in dramatic series and worked her way up to guest starring roles in shows like Vegas, Columbo, Crazy Like a Fox, the miniseries How the West Was Won and worked on the daytime dramas General Hospital, Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless. She moved to New York where she sang with a gospel group in venues such as Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, Town Hall, and Carnegie Hall. Family matters forced her to head back to her hometown of Seattle for what she thought was a temporary move and there was cast in an independent movie Family Hayes. She was also featured in a Showtime movie shot in Seattle, Nowheresville, played the lead in two Equity plays, Someone’s Knocking, and The Good Doctor, and worked in Vancouver, BC on U.S. Productions, Sliders and For Hope. Her memoir Learning How to Fly recounts her journey from Norway to Hollywood and from animal lover to animal activist and anti-vivisectionist. She has written four Hollywood Mysteries: Deception, Malevolence, A Fate Worse Than Death, and Avarice.
Britt is president of the non-profit group Kindness and Science in Action. She can be reached at britt@kindnessandscience.org For animal lovers, Britt asks that you check out www.kindnessandscience.org and sign up for the mailing list. Her website is brittlind.com
