An open letter to my elusive story characters

Ladies and gentlemen:

Hello.

I am your author. Remember me? We've met before - in Midwestern cafes, in sleepy New England harbor towns, in Alaskan villages and the English towns and hamlets of past centuries. Some of you are accomplished doctors, writers, church leaders, and scientists; some of you are whiny girls, gawky boys, shy bachelors, and social misfits.

You all have two things in common: I love you very much, and you have run away from me.

There is little more frustrating to a loving and dedicated author like me than to have her favorite characters decide not to join her in her adventures, and quietly slip away while she begs and pleads for them to come back. How can you be so heartless? I want to go on adventures with you and take you to places you never thought you'd go - I had husbands and wives for some of you, successful careers and worldwide fame for others; but you wanted no part of it. You deliberately walked out of my life and my stories and left me with big holes that no one but you could fill.

The ones who hurt me most are those of you who never even gave me a chance to know you. Those of who you let me meddle in your lives for a few years before giving up on me - thank you, at least, for the time we spent together and the fragments and stray pages of writing you left me with. But those of you who wouldn't even let me write a whole page about you - how could you? Why not?


Look at you, Peter Collins, WWII pilot and art teacher. I had such a beautiful future planned for you. You began your story as a quiet, painfully shy middle-aged bachelor who lived by the sea in England and taught art lessons from his beautiful yellow cottage - by the end of the story, you would have fallen in love with a wonderful girl, survived the terror of Dunkirk, and become a great hero in the RAF. Yet you only gave me a mere five pages before you left as quietly as you had come.

And look at you, Jessamine Hale, young pioneer woman who was captured by the Arapaho tribe on her way west. What an amazing story you were going to have! You were going to get to be rescued from death, find a brand new life in a brand new culture despite all your struggles, marry the terribly good-looking chief, find your parents after many years, tell off your racist brother, and have a bunch of really cute children and live happily ever after - until war broke out, and then you would have danger, adventure, turmoil, and a happy ending. What more could you want out of a book anyway?? But you only gave me a few tantalizing crisis scenes before you abruptly turned your back and walked out. What's up with that?

Now I'm almost afraid when I make new literary friends, because I'm afraid they will leave me someday, just like you did. Especially when they're particularly beautiful - like the mysterious Rian and Seanan Caeli, whom I just met. Or Elair Wythart. My very first fantasy story - but what if they turn around and walk out on me like you did? What kind of example are you setting for them? At this rate, you'll never let me write another story again at all!

Please, just occasionally, please let me write your stories. None of my characters who ever let me write their stories got gypped in the end. I promise I only have your best interests at heart and I long to give you a great ride through the course of our book(s) together. Won't you trust me and come along on a few adventures?

Respectfully your author,
Vicki