Who's On Second?

 

Terry here:

Our question this week is about secondary characters--which ones we've created that we find the most intriguing and memorable? I've included the scene where they appeared and said a few words about the impact they had on the story. 

The obvious best answer would be Loretta Singletary, who eventually deserved her own book (A Risky Undertaking for Loretta Singletary.) From the opening line of A Killing at Cotton Hill, the first in the Samuel Craddock series, she has played a pivotal role in every book. 

Here’s the scene where she first appeared: 

 “I watch Loretta Singletary hurry up the steps to my house. She hasn’t seen me on the porch in my beat-up old rocker where I often sit to catch any early morning breeze. Usually Loretta doesn’t miss a thing, so I know she’s on a mission. So as not to scare her, I start rocking and clear my throat. She jumps like a weasel has crossed her path. 

 “Samuel, you liked to’ve scared me to death,” she says.” 

 In the scene, she’s bringing news, but she goes into Samuel’s house get herself a glass of water before she tells the news. The description of her: “she still has a brisk bounce in her walk…she’s short and a little on the plump side, with gray hair that she keeps in tight curls like a halo around her face, and pale blue eyes. She always had nice legs, and they are still her pride, so she wears skirts and disapproves of women who wear pants.” 

 Everything you need to know about Loretta is in those few paragraphs: her physical description; that she is a good enough friend of Samuel’s that she can go into his house without asking; and that she bring news. Also there is the subtle hint that she’s a good person in the “tight curls like a halo…” 

 I think of Loretta like a Greek chorus. She knows what goes on in town and when Samuel wants to get the low-down on any happenings around town, she’s the one he goes to. She is a gossip, but not in a mean way. She doesn’t gossip to hurt people. She knows when to keep her mouth shut. 

But probably her most endearing trait to those who know her is that she keeps everyone supplied with baked goods!

When she first showed up, I thought of her as a figure of fun, but she soon put that out of my mind. She has opinions, but they are reasoned ones. She cares about people. The longer I’ve known her, the more I admire her. And over time, she has changed, deciding to change her hairdo and to start wearing slacks. She even dates! 

 In every, single book there is a character who intrigues me and demands to be seen and heard. Again, in “Cotton Hill,” Caroline Parjeter rolls into town for her mother’s funeral. She’s a good-time girl whose life hasn’t turned out so well. Here’s how Samuel first sees her, in the funeral home for the viewing of his old friend Dora Lee Parjeter: 

 “I hear a little ruffle of sound in the front room that alerts me. It’s like a rush of swallows in an evening out near the tank. I turn around look toward the door. A woman is standing poised there, and for a second I catch my breath. It could be Dora Lee twenty years ago, but in a different kind of life. The woman, Caroline, is dressed in a black and high heels and has a polished look that you see on TV women. I don’t know fashion, but the suit has a cut that takes advantage of every curve of Caroline’s body without being showy. She’s wearing pearls and carrying a compact little bag. She’s way over-dressed for a visitation, and the other ladies won’t forgive her for it.”

Caroline completely changes the story, inserting herself into it in ways I never suspected when I started writing the book. 

 In the second book, The Last Death of Jack Harbin, I liked the character of Walter Dunn so much that I brought him back in the most recent book, Murder at the Jubilee Rally. 

Here’s my (and the readers’) first glance at him: “He’s a good two inches taller than me, at least six feet four inches, and muscled. His face is rough from a bad case of acne, and his features don’t quite come together , with big, flabby lips and little ears. But his blue eyes burn intensely, and I’ll that’s what most people end up remembering about him.” 

What I’ve found is that the most intriguing secondary characters, though, are the ones that have “issues.” They are prickly, weak, egotistical, greedy, careless, or some combination. They can be the villains or sometimes just bystanders. They show up in every book, muscling their way in without a care in the world about how I, the author, might feel about them. 

 Everyone from Maria Trevino, who I intended to be a one-book character in The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake, and who came to stay; to Slate McClusky, in Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek, who is not a good guy but does everything he can to protect his brother. From Samuel’s brother, Horace, a weak man who Samuel cares about nonetheless; to Gabe LoPresto, a peacock of a man who strayed and came back. And finally, to Samuel’s grand-niece, Hailey, a surly teenager who showed in the latest book, Murder at the Jubilee Rally, and practically took over. 

 Without strong secondary characters, I think the books would start to get repetitious, so it’s important to me that I pay attention to those who show up and give them their due.