Character Profiles as a Marketing Tool: Zane Bowman

Sydney Aaliyah, on her blog, came up with the idea of using Character Profiles as a marketing tool. I like it! Kind of a video character card. OK, since I’m really concentrating on Zane right now… My MC Character Profile:


In the profile, I show Zane Bowman's character. In 15 seconds you learn:

• Zane is an All-American guy, at least he thinks of himself that way, and he knows exactly what he wants…until he meets Hadley. 
• He is good with his hands: He builds (and races) high end wooden boats, he sculpts in wood, and he knows just how to touch a woman.
• His mission is to help Hadley get out of town as quickly as possible while hiding secrets about her mother’s death, but something about the tiny Parisian beauty turns his resolve…and his world…. upside down.

*Imagine these lines delivered by the movie trailer guy voice.


In an action packed promo, they tell who he is, his motivation and his role in the series. They use images and quotes from him that make you instantly like him, relate to him and want to root for him.

 In my case, you see him interacting with a puppy at his father's log cabin, manhandling a wooden boat to safety in a storm, and taking a midnight swim in the lake with Hadley. Maybe in a pickup truck or tractor on his father's farm. Maybe some dreamy flashbacks of him with his Native American father and blonde European mother dancing wildly around a bonfire when he's very young and he and his father recently standing back in the shadows of trees at the cemetery as Hadley buries her mother. Then in the end, you zoom into the amber pendant hanging on his chest.


Quote: “These Barrington women are only trouble for us. Well, her mother isn’t any more, true, but I’ll breathe easier when this one is gone too.”


And his looks! OK. I'll admit it. He's a young Antonio Banderas, looking like he did in Desperado. Except he has topaz eyes. Don't you just want to eat him up?

Query: What do you think?

I entered my query in the contest over at the Mother Write blog. I welcome advice, feedback, comments here or there.

And, while I'm not querying agents yet, I'm getting ready to start soon.

http://motherwrite.blogspot.com/2012/09/an-agents-inbox-10.html 

An Agent's Inbox #10

Victoria,

Hadley Barrington has lived in France long enough to know she wants nothing to do with Oklahoma or the old wooden yacht she inherited from her mother. But she does want to know what caused her mother's death. And to sell the boat so she can get back to her life as a successful jewelry designer and free French woman, unfettered by any desire for long term relationships.

Zane wants nothing to do with anyone who is not all-American. His future lies right here on Grand Lake, Oklahoma. And that includes marrying a local girl…when he finds the right one. But his comfortable world dissolves into spicy chaos when his father asks him to take on the mission of making sure the tiny Parisian beauty leaves the lake--and the country--as soon as possible.

Zane is a hunky, Native American solution to Hadley's problem of getting the boat ready to sell, with his long dark hair and the amber pendant dangling on his handsome bronze chest. But Barrington women are dangerous for the men in his family, and he must keep secret what he knows about her mother’s last days. A secret that might rock Hadley’s French view of love. The story is set on GrandLake ‘O the Cherokees. The “front side” is a playground of wealthy oil men and a unique wooden boat culture. The “back side” is where the locals, many of them Native American, live out their lives, often in poverty.

My book, a story of returning home, culture shock, and finding true love, might be called Through Amber Smoke, Cougars on the Dock, or Eurotrash Accent. The manuscript is complete and consists of 75,000 words. It fits firmly into the Contemporary Romance genre.

I am a professional non-fiction writer and teacher in business and the university. My short play, Every Boat’s for Sale, was recently performed in a local theatre. This story was inspired by my fascination with boats and my involvement in the wooden boat culture of Grand Lake, Oklahoma. In fact, a significant portion of the book was written on a boat.

I blog about my writing, tweet about it (over 1000 followers), maintain a Facebook Page and an author fan page.

Respectfully,
S.V.


COUGARS ON THE DOCK

Hadley frowned and rubbed her sweaty palms on the seat of her shorts. Why wasn’t the door shut? Was someone on board? She paused to listen, but all she could hear was the creaking of the wooden dock and her own heart pounding. Her expression, more a grimace than a smile, hurt her face. Nothing else could go wrong after the h*** of the last couple days. She’d used up her share of bad luck. She was sure of it. All she wanted was to sell the stupid boat and head back home to France. With her toe, she nudged the door of the neglected old yacht the rest of the way open, then squinted into the dim interior, wary of spiders and other creatures that thrived in abandoned places.

“Are you Hadley?” A voice erupted from the shadows, sending her scrambling backwards up the stairs and out onto the deck. Her gaze darted up and down the deserted dock. Could anyone hear her scream, if that’s what she decided to do? Forget screaming. She was alone. She’d handle this man herself. Sucking in her breath and keeping a safe distance, Hadley faced the stranger. She stood as tall as she could, crossed her arms, lifted her chin and tried her best to appear intimidating.

“Oui. I am Hadley.” She hoped the golden man couldn't hear the tremble in her voice. “But who are you, Monsieur, and why are you on my boat?”

GUTGAA Meet and Greet

Where do you write?

I write at home, on my boat, and even sometimes (don’t tell my boss) at work

Quick. Go to your writing space, sit down and look to your left. What is the first thing you see?

A magnetic poetry wall with some Haikus and hundreds of words to create more.

Favorite time to write?

Anytime I have a few minutes free

Drink of choice while writing?

Coffee in the morning. Water and iced tea at other times.

When writing, do you listen to music or do you need complete silence?

I like silence when I write--Occasionally vocal-free music. I really should be listening to some Dean Martian and Edith Piaf as I write this one. Both would be in the sound track for the movie....

What was your inspiration for your latest manuscript and where did you find it?

Oh so many places. I love wooden boats and Grand Lake. That’s the setting. I actually started out wanting to write about my hero and heroine’s parents and their love affair, back when Grand Lake was really grand, at the peak of the oil boom, but it seems that era-60s-is not a popular time for romance books. It’s not long enough ago to be interesting, so I told the story of a pair of lovers who did not end up together, but their children who did.

What's your most valuable writing tip?

I learned so much from my RWA group, before I had to leave it, then it broke up. When I edit parts of my WIP I wrote before then, I have much, much more work to get it up to par. The story is still there, but dialog tags, adverbs, etc. litter it. I truly wish I was still involved in that kind of writers’ group, So if you have one near you, take advantage of it.

Learning to be French

Finding the Frenchness in myself was not a motive in reading all the book about French women lately, or in watching all the subtitled French movies...but as an added perk in my research, I'm kinda finding the French woman in myself!

My heroine, although born in Oklahoma, lived in France between the ages of twelve and thirty, so, yeah, a lot of French Culture has rubbed off on her.  I've never been to France and some readers commented that I had her acting in ways a French girl wouldn't act, so I had to go back to the drawing board and find out just exactly who she was inside. It's been a fascinating journey!

As a result of the books and movies that have educated me in the ways of French women, I now take better care of my skin, wear less makeup, let my hair flow more naturally (although I've never really been a hairspray person) and I'm working on flirting with my eyes. Letting my eyes do more of my smiling. Maybe that's scary in a woman in her fifties, but I'm having fun.

I have always been able to non-verbally "flirt" with babies. Love getting in line behind a baby over its mom or dad's shoulder. I can "talk" to it with my eyes for quite a while, and I'm trying to use that technique more with people too. Is that weird?

The one thing I know that the French would look down their long noses about me is my weight, but that's OK because I really, really need to do more about that anyway. I am now buying gourmet greens at Whole foods and bringing ziplocs full  to snack on at work. I hope it works.

Looking forward to a new book about French women that was supposed to arrive today. No telling what it will teach me! (And yes, I am a little bit French in my DNA, but not much!)

This is the book that I hope is waiting for me tonight.

How Can a book with a French Heroine Have a HEA?

Why did I make her French? From my research, French women do not really believe in HEA. So how can a French woman be the heroine of a romance book, since that genre's number one requirement is a HEA?

I made the decision for Hadley to live in Paris a long time ago. I've been writing this first book for several years. And she's not really French. She just lived there for half of her life, but a thirty year old who had lived in France since she was fourteen would be pretty French, I think. I chose France because I planned for her mother to be Cougar on the French Riveria, but now, after a lot of research, I'm realizing that Cougars on the French Riveria aren't really Cougars. They're just French women, sexy, deliberately selfish, unconserned with what other people think. And I'm realizing that Hadley's issues are not so much by being taught to be a cougar by her mother, but just the general attitude of French women. I may have to change the name of the book from Cougars on the Dock, but I love that name. We'll see....

I must be French. Well, I actually am a little, in my DNA.  But how did a girl from a religious family in Arkansas and Oklahoma, who has not even traveled much end up with those attitudes?  Must be because I've really so many books. I think that's it. Anyway, even before I started really researching French women, I'd given Hadley a pretty French attitude. And I think it came from me. And some reader really don't like her. She'd not like them. Neither am I. But if I'm going to write Romance for an American audience, I have some issues to resolve.

Thank goodness, Hadley lived in the U.S. for half her life. She can come to recognize that both she and her mother were more "American" than they'd thought. She can come around to some American attitudes. I guess in many Romance books, women go from reserved American to someone whose had the French attitude of chancing everything for love, then back to the American when it turns out that the sacrifice isn't really necessary because, you know, it's a HEA.

But I don't think I'll ever be the same after realizing that I'm a Free French woman. And the thing that makes my heart sing about French women is they grow up with no concept of needing to be popular. They need to be themselves and think popular is boring.

Elphaba and I agree!

Some resouces I've used to research French Women:

What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind ( Book)

Anna and the French Kiss (Book)

French Kiss (Movie)

Paris in Love (Book)

A French Gigolo (Movie)

Breathless (Movie)

Signs Your Story Has Too Many Characters

I met an old man when I took a group of students on a trip to Orlando Florida to work with Habitat for Humanity. He and I sat on a rock bench and watched children play in the courtyard of a church that was helping sponsor us.

My son, back home in OK, wasn’t even a year old. The old man, who volunteered to read to the children each week, told me to always read books to children that were above their level and to start reading chapter books early. To make them look forward to the next day’s reading.

Turned out that old man had sold most of his property to Disney World to create the theme park. A pretty smart old man. I listened to him.

His advice worked with my son (now almost 19), but how does it apply to my writing? He would have told me to push the envelope–to do more that is expected of me. I guess his message was similar to that of my favorite song as a teenager, “Dream the Impossible Dream.” (Yes, I’m that old)

I am just finishing up my first novel and I have a play being performed in Tulsa theater this summer. The future is bright as long as I continue to push that envelope and dream that dream!

This post was originally written a a comment on the guest post of Lorenda Christensen (Golden heart Finalist in Paranormal Romance) on the blog of "The Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood."