How I find my characters…

How I Find my Characters
Janelle Meraz Hooper

Some of you have asked where I find the unusual characters in my stories. They come from a lifelong habit of people watching! It started when I was a kid. On hot summer nights, when I was growing up in Oklahoma, we often piled into my Aunt Pat’s car, drove downtown, and parked right in the middle of the block.

With my Aunt in the driver’s seat and my mom riding shotgun, my cousin Bob and I would settle in for a night when the sidewalks were filled with Native Americans from several tribes, Mexicans, Lebanese, Germans, black people, and Asians. My aunt and mother knew a lot of people from each group and were on friendly terms with many of them. They often stopped by our car to visit and trade news about the latest powwow coming up, the German Octoberfest, which artists had signed up for the summer art show, and more. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that the seeds of observation were planted in my memory at an early age. Here’s a few ideas:

A Three-Turtle Summer, my first fictional autobiography in the Turtle Trilogy, I got lucky. I came from a large Hispanic family whose members I had adored all my life. They all signed releases thinking I’ve never get a novel started, much less finished!
In my Trilogy, I did change a few names. My Aunt Pat became Pauline. Not for any reason that I can think of. Maybe I was on a power trip! I renamed myself Glory because I didn’t think “Janelle” fit the character I was writing about.

As Brown as I Want, the middle book in my Turtle Trilogy has a lot going on including attempted murders, but once I realized I could write and control the story, I decided that I wanted my mom to (finally!) have a good man, so I added one more character. He ended up taking over the book! I found him at a powwow at the high school in Federal Way, Washington. He was sitting about six seats away and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He looked like an Apache even though the Native Americans in Washington State were from other tribes. He had a long braid at the back of his head and his neatly pressed navy-blue cotton shirt had an allover design of tiny white arrows. He became my Powwow Pete—if he only knew! I never spoke to him, of course.

Custer & His Naked Ladies, the third novel in my Turtle Trilogy, had a lot of my family members from the first two books, but I needed two new characters, Soap and his mother. I couldn’t see him, but my new Soap drew me from across a drugstore at the mall in Lawton with his rich voice. When I finally found him at the cash register, I could see he was tall for a Comanche. Maybe a Kiowa? No matter. His hair was in a long black braid down his back and his baseball cap was on backwards. He wore his blue and white striped painter’s overalls with a vibrant Hawaiian shirt underneath. To me he looked like a Norman Rockwell painting. On his feet, he wore white, sockless, running shoes. Woot! There he was! Glory’s romantic interest. I needed him because although the first two novels were based upon my life, Custer & His Naked Ladies was fiction. I had already been married for years by the time I wrote Custer & His Naked Ladies. His mom, Maxine, came from a Native American that fed me and my cousin, Bob, fry bread at a powwow once. What a nice woman.

I have a lot of other books and stories, but you get the idea. For more information, follow the link to my Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/janellehooper

Custer & His Naked Ladies. #3 in the Turtle Trilogy

finalcustercoverSee the book on Amazon

A modern-day Western novel…
PB & Kindle, suitable for New Adult (NA) and up. Amazon and others.

Published by iUniverse.

A few lines from Custer & His Naked Ladies, the third book in my Turtle Trilogy. Glory, all grown up now, lives in Seattle and has unexpectedly been left by her husband. She’s on a commuter plane between Ft. Worth and Lawton—on her way home to see her family…while she’s looking out the plane’s window, she ponders the past… 

Glory looked down at the barren landscape, after recognizing the pain and suffering of the settlers a part of her switched sides…A good example was Cynthia Ann Parker, a settler’s child who was kidnapped by Comanches in 1836 when she was nine-years-old, and later became the mother of Quanah Parker, who grew up to be a great Comanche chief. As a child, she must have been terrified when the Comanches carried her away but years later, when she was “rescued” by the white man, she didn’t want to return to the white settlement. She had become a Comanche heart and soul. She died of a broken heart when she was separated from her Indian family. Why couldn’t they just leave her alone?

Glory had read the stories about the Indian cruelty to the settlers, but little was said about the whites, like Cynthia Ann Parker, who had embraced the Indian way of life.
Still, the pain and suffering of the settlers couldn’t be ignored. Glory couldn’t imagine how she could survive if she were a mother whose child had been ripped away from her and carried off by a band of screaming Indians. Many of them never saw or heard from their child again. They must have spent the rest of their days wondering if it were alive or dead.

Glory looked down at the barren landscape. A part of her switched sides. So, you couldn’t wait to get rid of the Indians and get our land. What have you done with it? Nothing! Except maybe pollute it. Give it back! Glory tried to imagine the plains once again filled with buffalo and other game. Peaceful Indian villages would nestle next to the creeks…yeah, Glory interrupted herself, until a neighboring tribe came and set their teepees on fire…okay…so not all of the Indians’ troubles were caused by the white man.

The drink cart began to move down the aisle. A gray-haired woman on the other side of the plane leaned over the arm of her chair and softly asked Glory, “Pardon me, but I’m from New Jersey and I’m wondering if you’re a real Indian?”

“Funny you should ask. I’m going back home to try and figure that out!”

The woman didn’t know if Glory was being funny or rude. Why shouldn’t she be confused? She was!

“No, really,” Glory continued, “I was part-white and part-Mexican when my mother got remarried to a Comanche Indian when I was eight-years-old. I’m not really sure what I am!”

“I see. Perhaps you should convert to Judaism like me. Then your confusion would be complete.” She looked out her window, “We did our share of wandering in the desert. Of course, we didn’t have RVs,” she joked. Her eyes followed a caravan of recreational vehicles as they moved down the road, red dust billowing behind them.

“That’s not a bad idea. The only problem is I don’t think all of those cultures would fit on my sweatshirt.”

The stewardess came around with cold drinks and the woman struck up a conversation with her.

“Do you have any kosher Coke?” she teased.

“No Ma’am, but I have some kosher Pepsi.”

“That’ll do.”

Custer & His Naked Ladies. Book 3 of the Turtle Trilogy. Paperback and Kindle (etc.). Suitable for New-Adult and up. Published by iUniverse.


Reviews

 “Janelle  Meraz Hooper has done it again! Custer & His Naked Ladies is filled with quirky and likable characters in a richly detailed setting. Humor, family, and love come shining through. There is a poignant line in the book that has stayed with me, “Old age had crept in and stolen their bodies while they were dancing through life…” These women have danced! VF Gibson, Seattle, WA

“I purchased Custer & His Naked Ladies at your booth on July 4th in Steilacoom and promised I’d let you know what I thought of it. After I finished it my husband decided to read it (We had both enjoyed A Three-Turtle Summer a few years ago)  so I waited to hear his comments. We thoroughly enjoyed the book. We both agreed that you are excellent at spinning a yarn and at painting a verbal picture of people and places. You can quote us on that! P.R., Tacoma

“I just finished reading your book “Custer & His Naked Ladies LOOOOVE it, excellent writing and story. It gave me a nice inside view of the wonderful culture of our American Indians. Good job, Janelle S.Z., Puyallup, WA


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Custer and His Naked Ladies, excerpt

finalcustercoverCuster and His Naked Ladies

A modern-day Western

Amazon and other Internet bookstores

Paperback and Kindle

an excerpt

Janelle Meraz Hooper

1.      Dumped 

      Glory was on her way to join her husband on a NOAA research vessel when she tried to call him to say she was running late. That was when she discovered he wasn’t on the ship; without telling her, he’d pulled out of the offshore project days before. With that failed phone call, all of her recent, uncomfortable inklings fell into place. Her marriage was over. He just hadn’t gotten around to telling her yet.

That was how she ended up at Sea-Tac Airport, halfway between Seattle and Tacoma, with her hair in braids, wearing a pink Where’s the Powwow? sweatshirt. She carried only her wallet, a camera, and a faded blue gym bag. The bag was filled with the same kinds of clothes she was wearing, a few books, and a photo of her husband. The photo—frame and all—she chucked into a trash barrel outside the airport. She would have liked to toss it out of the airplane, but she was pretty sure it would make the stewards cranky if she opened the emergency exit at 35,000 feet.   

            Her original destination, the research vessel, was scheduled to drop anchor over the undersea volcanoes off the coast of Washington State. The scientists on the ship were to study the marine life that thrived in the hot water that spewed out of the craters.

            After the research trip, she and her husband, Rick, were to take a much-needed vacation to Mexico and reconnect. They hadn’t had any identifiable problems, but her husband had been moody and refused to talk about it. Glory had hoped he would open up after a few days rest on a hot sandy beach with a Margarita in his hand. Rick hadn’t been in favor of the vacation, but Glory had insisted. Finally, he had thrown up his hands and given up.

Before the research trip, he had convinced her to put all of their things in storage because they didn’t know if they’d be back in Seattle when the project was over. There was no use, he’d said, in paying rent while they were gone.

It made sense.

Sort of.  

But why hadn’t she been suspicious when he’d insisted on putting all of his things into separate marked boxes? How dumb was she? The dirty rat! And what would she have done on the research ship without him for three weeks? Her specialty was in freshwater turtles; there would be no real work for her there. No paycheck. He was the specialist in coastal underwater volcanoes. He belonged there. She would have been nothing more than a guest with no way off the boat. Her cheeks burned at the embarrassment she felt. What was he thinking?

Her new destination was her mother’s in Oklahoma. Getting a last minute ticket was expensive, and Glory was thankful for her credit cards. No one ever went to Oklahoma unless they had to, and airline tickets to the Sooner State were never a bargain. Glory handed the woman at the check-in counter her credit card and mumbled a quote from a rich friend, “All it takes is money.” The woman briefly looked up, then, expressionless, continued adding up the full fare charges on her keyboard.

On her way to the airplane boarding area, over and over, Glory thought, this isn’t the way normal, educated people get divorced.

I’ve been dumped!

With no explanation.

No discussion.

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