An intro of sorts

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

Hi, I'm a  writer...that is my day job.  (And my night job, too often!)    Most of my stuff is SF or fantasy.   In my spare time (hollow laughs welcome) I wander around looking at various writing groups to see what other people are doing, when I should be working on revisions or copy edits or writing blog entries somewhere.  (In other words, it's not really my "spare" time--it's my goof-off time.  I tell myself that by hanging around writers' groups I'm really working.  Hasn't yet fooled any editors.

At the moment, I've just (last Saturday) finished the rough draft of the second volume in the current bunch of books and am now working on the structural revision.  This is when I find out that an entire chapter is two chapters out of place, grump!   I'm also waiting with increasing impatience for the copy edits, which I was supposed to have on June 23, and then June 26, and now it's July 3....and they told me the hard deadline for returning the copy edits was July 10.  Monday is the 6th. If they overnight them I might get them the 7th...and checking copy edits on an 800+ page ms in two days so I can overnight them back is...impossible.   ARGH! Whimper! 
( On a few other matters... )

Characters--the binary approach

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

As with anything else in writing, there are multiple ways to look at characterization, and all of them work for some people.   Here's one that's worked for me, and for some of the classes I've taught.
( Caracter creation ideas below... )