Ask the Author–If you could meet your characters, what would you say to them?
February. A cold month, yet warm with the feeling of love. You know, with Valentine’s Day and all that? Yeah, I know, that was super corny. Sometimes, I just can’t help it. It’s okay if you rolled your eyes. I probably would have too. Anyhow, it’s the first Monday of the month, which means an author question. Here it is for this month (If you haven’t already guessed from the title). If you could meet your characters, what would you say to them?
This is actually a really hard question for me. See, I’m really not good at knowing what to say to people in real life, so I have no idea what I would say. It would be weird because I know a lot about them, and they wouldn’t know anything about me, so it would be hard to ask them or talk about things without coming across as stalker-ish and creepy. I mean, I couldn’t just go and say, “Guess what! I totally wrote all about you in this book.” Perhaps I should just pretend I was meeting a complete stranger and I didn’t know anything about them. In that case, it would just be passing small talk and not very fulfilling though, because I don’t really start deep conversations with strangers usually.
If I did manage to find the right balance between being super stalky and a total stranger, I suppose it might vary quite a bit depending on which character I was talking to. Because, well, if I ran across any Traders or Gallis, I don’t think I would want to say around long enough to say anything. I think I’d just get out of there. If I bumped into Ashlynn, we might be able to talk about some of the things we have in common, which is actually a fair bit. If it was Alder I met, perhaps I could find a way to bring up birds, and then steer the conversation toward rocs. Maybe that would work without feeling strange. And if it was Dillyn I met, I might not have much of a problem, because he’s one of those people that just can make a conversation with a random stranger feel natural and keep it flowing without much effort. I’d probably see if I could get him to start telling stories, which wouldn’t be too difficult, and a lot of fun.
Probably the most likely result of me meeting any of my characters, regardless of how many times I rehearsed the perfect conversation in my mind, would just be for me to give them a smile and a quick hi, before moving on with a very red face, because I would probably be too star-struck to say anything. I’m really not the type of person that goes out of their way to try and meet their favorite celebrities because I’m pretty positive I’d just choke and look ridiculous. I don’t see how it would be any different in this case, but it’s fun to dream anyhow.
What about you? If you met the characters from your favorite book, what would you do and say?