Okay, here's an off-the-wall topic: the multi-faceted character. As Humans, as individuals, we aren't just one thing or one person to everyone. We are employee, parent, spouce, offspring, sibling, audience, patron and sometimes pet owner.

While it's far more interesting to develop and write multi-faceted characters, the fact of it is, it takes a lot of work and thought. Each area of a person's life often affects another. For example, if your homelife sux and there's severe conflict, it affects performance at work. Vice versa. If there's too much stress in the life, it affects the creative process. As I work on stories and the characters, I find it vitally necessary to rewrite the draft at least once because there is so much to say, so much to demonstrate and remind the reader that the people in the story are more than just action figures on the page. One person is not the same person to everyone. Optimus is not the same person to Rodimus as he is to Magnus. And he's even more different to Rusti and again to the Dinobots.

At one point I thought about giving Rusti a pet dog or something but it just never worked into the storyline. So I took that idea and gave it to Koontah, who owns a pair of cats. By doing that, by making a slight change in the character's life, I found that it also affected the story. What was just a gift from a friend of his, became a plot device in the next book.

There is so much I'd like to fit into my writing, so much more that too often I just can't do that sometimes I'm a bit disappointed that I simply can't fit it all in. I do the very best I can, even though I know I can do more and do better.

Is that morbid obsession or just another facet of a multi- dimensional persona?