Welcome back the lovely Tanith to Friends Friday today! Hello, make yourself at home, it’s lovely to have you back!

How do I look?
 

A few weeks ago I was introduced to a friend’s husband, who I’ll call Bryan as I can’t remember his name (oops!) My friend had been reading The Hand He Dealt and, I discovered, had persuaded Bryan into reading it too. Much to my surprise, he spent the entire conversation telling me how much he was enjoying it, dissecting the storyline and singing the characters’ praises.

Fortunately any chance of a swollen head on my part dissipated when he moved on their appearance.

When I picture characters, I usually select an actor to use as a basic model. Of course, rarely will an actor completely have the right look – he may not have the build of a college footballer, for instance, or she may not have the stance of a military officer. But it’s an easy way of marking them in my head so I don’t accidentally change their hair colour halfway through.

But that’s me as a writer.

I’d forgotten that, as a reader, I often picture characters entirely differently from their description in the book. Bryan was no exception. He cheerfully told me that he had pictured my two male leads as a frail little blond and a Robert-Pattinson-as-Edward Cullen lookalike respectively. Rather unnerving when one was dark-haired and cute and the other was an ash-blond college jock, although the personality wasn’t far off – maybe it’s just easy to think of Pattinson when you’re looking for pale and moody?

How does everyone else picture their characters? And does anyone else feel a little weird when other people picture them differently?

I’m over on the LRC yahoo group and I’m giving away a copy of Silver Screen Dream! I’m going to set another contest too to win a copy of Naughty Rendezvous so please come on over and enjoy the fun!

I apologise for being terrible at blogging this week I promise to be better next week!

It’s the question I try to answer over at Lisabet Sarai’s today!

Pop over for a hot excerpt from Temporary Insanity and an insight into how much of my stories are taken from real life!