Just in! You can hear a few minutes of the audio version of STOLEN MAGIC here: https://soundcloud.com/harperaudio_us/stolenmagic_levine!

Here’s a preview of my upcoming tour for Stolen Magic. You’ll see that the farthest west I’ll be coming is Ohio and also that the time isn’t set yet for my first appearance in Washington, DC, but you can contact the bookstore for details.

Sunday, April 19th – Rhinebeck, NY
Oblong Books @4:00 PM (with Jeanne Birdsall)

Tuesday, April 21st – Concord, NH
Gibson’s Bookstore @6:30 PM

Thursday, April 23rd – Fairless Hills, PA
B&N Fairless Hills @7:00 PM

Saturday, April 25th – Hudson, OH
The Hudson Library & Historical Society from 2 – 4 PM

Sunday, April 26th – Washington, DC
Barston’s Childs Play @ 3:30 PM

Monday, April 27th – Takoma Park, MD
Takoma Park Public Library @7:30 PM

On October 30, 2014, Rock On wrote, I was kind of having trouble with the idea for one of my characters. She’s a loner, and I’ve never written an MC who was a loner before. I like to give my characters a good, quirky supporting cast with a really close best friend and a geeky friend and lots of other unique characters. But if my character is a loner then that means basically no friends. She’s an only child too, so no siblings. About the only people she has are her parents and then she has a dog. Any suggestions for a book with about three good characters and a dog, and then the villain?

In response, Bibliophile wrote, I assume by loner you mean introverted, not good with most people, etc. If that is the case, then that just means that your MC won’t have a lot of friends, not none at all. She can still have a supporting cast of three or so friends who are probably misfits as well. Frankly, most of the characters I write ARE loners or misfits, mostly because I have never had an exorbitant amount of friends myself or I forget to write in interactions with other people besides like, one other person who is normally some sort of love interest. I think that any plot can be used with that cast of characters, though you may find that that size cast is just hard to work with. I do assume though that each of these characters are involved enough that it would be possible to tell the story or the majority of it from any of their POVs. That said, there is still room to place in tertiary characters to liven things up.

Bibliophile’s idea is certainly a possibility. Rock On’s MC–let’s call her Regina–may have a few friends who aren’t close to her, maybe because she pushes them away. Part of the arc of the story could be her growth in the friend department, and at the end she may have a best buddy. Could be that in the book’s crisis she’ll fail unless she relies on someone. For a happy ending, she does, and the friend comes through. For a tragedy, she doesn’t, or she does and the friend fails her.

We can add more characters if we like, the quirky supporting cast, although maybe not the best friend, while maintaining Regina’s loner personality. One of the supporting characters can be super-friendly, which may be annoying or not, and we can write all the ways Regina pushes him away. We can make a teacher reach out to her, and even though she likes this teacher, she can still keep herself at a long arm’s length.

Or we can make Regina a loner not by choice. She’s always reaching out, but her attempts are so awkward that people are put off. Or she’s hyper-critical and no one can stand to be around her. In this case we can also have a big cast, although no one likes her.

There are other alternatives as well. A long time ago I read a thriller called Slayground by Richard Stark (high school and up), which I’ve mentioned before on the blog. Most of the book, as I remember it, is a chase through an amusement part, and it was so tense that I inhaled before I read the first sentence and exhaled when I closed the book. Parker, the hero, isn’t a saint, but the people who are after him are worse. If I remember right, there were flashbacks to scenes with them and also to scenes with Parker’s girlfriend, but mostly the reader is in his head as he plans how to escape and how to defeat them. As I recall, we get to know only Parker in the course of the story, but it’s enough, because the action is so intense.

We can try something similar. Regina is alone somewhere; let’s imagine the setting is a kingdom where she doesn’t speak more than a few words of the language; she’s on a mission to capture the king’s daughter and get out. We write her thoughts, her plans, her emotions; we describe the castle and provide her observations of the king and his courtiers, the daughter, her nursemaids. We take her on a midnight exploration, where she fears discovery at every moment. If we want to suggest other characters in her life, we can have her write communiques that report her progress and failures to her commander at home, to her brother, to her teacher who prepared her for the mission. There’s probably going to be little dialogue in such a story, but lots of thoughts, setting, and, most of all, action.

Regina, her dog, and her parents can live in a remote place. She’s home-schooled, and she helps her parents with their work studying the behavior of a certain species of beetle. Maybe one of the parents is having trouble of some sort, and the beetles have been infested with a parasite, and Regina is carrying on a running argument with her parents about her future. Meanwhile, the dog develops a limp and the villain shows up. There’s a lot of complexity here. I don’t know if we need more characters.

The dog can be a full-fledged character, too, which will expand the cast a little. Even books for adults include animals who think in language. Some of them speak. A few examples include: Nop’s Trials by Donald McCaig (middle school and up, I think), which I loved, about a border collie; Call of the Wild by Jack London; Watchers by Dean Koontz (I’m not sure; maybe middle school, maybe high school), in which the dog’s name is Einstein, and I don’t think there are many characters in this one, either; Charlotte’s Web; Bambi. I don’t think the animals communicate directly with the human characters in any of these except Watchers. The dog in Rock On’s book–and ours–can talk if she wants it to. Regina’s dog can talk, can be her friend while maintaining its doggy qualities.

Here are five prompts:

• Regina lands on the seventh planet of a giant star, where conditions are deemed suitable for people. The others in her seven-member crew died during the crossing. She discovers three-legged sentient beings on this planet who remind her of stools more than of anything else. She needs to establish camp, resume communication with earth, and win the cooperation of the aliens. Write the story.

• Regina, a talented actor, is in a theater group. Everyone but her is outgoing, and she plays the part of a lovable friendly person. Because she’s so good, her fellow performers keep expecting her to be like her character. Write the cast party after the final performance in which she makes everyone understand that she is NOT their friend.

• Regina and her intelligent dog are home alone when the villain rings the doorbell and manages to get in the house. Write the scene, and be sure to keep the dog doglike even if you decide it can talk.

• Write the story of Regina with her beetle-scientist parents. You can give her the problems that I suggested or make up your own.

• Write the story of Regina and her attempt to kidnap the young princess.

Have fun, and save what you write!