Tattoos and Other Revelations

When I first met Tai Randolph, the protagonist of my series, I didn't know her name. I knew only that the person I was meeting was quick and smart and had a head full of riotous dirty blond curls. I also knew that she spoke with the cadences of Lowcountry Savannah, that she smoked Winston Lights, that she wore broken-in jeans and low-heeled boots with good tread, boots for working.

But how did these traits coalesce into one person, an individual like no other, a character?

I wish I could tell you. I've pondered it myself. It feels less like technique and more like alchemy. I have decided that it's part of what writer Elizabeth Gilbert calls "big magic," that mysterious process of search and recovery that is like diving into deep water and then feeling around in the sand at the bottom until your hand closes on something. Then it's bringing that artifact up from the blue dark into the mottled light. And then you say, "Aha! A tattoo! She has a tattoo!"

This tattoo.

She had another, but she didn't tell me about it until later. And eventually she got a third in Reckoning and Ruin, the fifth book in the series, but this flaming arrow in a flaming bow was tattooed on her bicep when I first met her.

That's how it is sometimes. My other character, Trey, was an enigma for me at the beginning. I knew he was attractive, with black hair and blue eyes. He was lean and fit and well-dressed. But he was also quiet, reserved, bordering on painfully shy at times. I knew there was something unusual about him, but I couldn't figure out what it was. And he wasn't telling. If I tried to pry him open, he'd just button his Armani jacket and give me a guarded look.

And then I read an article about frontal lobe injuries in Scientific American. I learned that if the brain's language centers are damaged in certain very specific ways, people can become highly sensitive to deception. In short, they become human lie detectors. And like a key, this information opened the door on the room where Trey kept his secrets. He still won't tell me things, not directly. But he trusts me enough now to give me keys to rooms I haven't yet discovered and lets me poke around when I find them.

I've also learned that I'm not the only writer who relates to her characters as people separate from her own imagination—many experts on the neuroscience of creativity explain that regarding our characters this way is a valuable and necessary way to tap the deeper wells of the writing process. My daughter says Tai and Trey are like members of the family now—their presence is palpable, and we gossip about their struggles and complications and discoveries in the same way that we discuss my flesh-and-blood relatives. This three-dimensional realness is what separates characters from caricatures. A bonus: interacting with well-rounded fictional characters is also valuable for readers, strengthening their sense of empathy and understanding (as a recent scientific study has demonstrated).

In my imagination, all characters are real; they simply inhabit a realm slightly apart from ours. Huck Finn and Miss Marple and Hermione Granger exist beyond a permeable veil. It is our job as authors to channel their stories into this world as clearly and cleanly as we can. This act feels more like discovery than creation (I'm not nearly the first writer to figure that out). And it means that the people in our heads can feel almost as alive as the people sharing the bus with us or sitting at the next cubicle.

My own life has been immensely enriched by getting to know Tai and Trey, by imagining the world through their eyes. And I have to admit, whenever I'm in Atlanta and hear the purr of a Ferrari engine or a burst of wicked female laughter, I can't resist looking around for them. They feel as close as my own shadow.

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Tina Whittle writes the Tai Randolph/Trey Seaver mysteries. The sixth book in this Atlanta-based series—Necessary Ends—is available now. Tina is a proud member of Sisters in Crime and has served as both a chapter officer and national board member. Visit her website to follow her on social media, sign up for her newsletter, or read additional scenes and short stories: www.tinawhittle.com.

It's In Their Stars

There is a phenomenon in astrology called the Saturn return: an astrological transit that occurs when the planet Saturn returns to the same place in the sky that it occupied at the moment of a person's birth, roughly 29.5 years into their lifetime. It’s a time of reckoning, of karma and consequence, and its effects can last for over a year.

In the first book in my Tai Randolph series, I introduced Tai, my narrator, right smack dab in the middle of her Saturn return. She's tipped over that edge now in the sixth book (the upcoming Necessary Ends), but is still mired in the transitional chaos, still struggling with the upheavals in her life. By the end of this book (out in April!) she makes a choice that rewrites her understanding of herself in a significant way. Pure Saturn return stuff.

This isn't the first book for which I've employed astrology as a developmental tool. Way back when I first started thinking about my characters, I created their natal charts, which are celestial maps that show the position of the sun, moon, and planets when a person was born. To make these charts, I used a very basic computer program that came with my favorite astrology book—the perfectly named The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need—but the Astrolabe site offers a free version of the same. And the information I learned, even if very basic as astrological interpretations go, has proven quite helpful.

My protagonist Tai Randolph was born on March 21^st.  That makes her an Aries sun sign—fiery, aggressive, energetic. It's where she gets her recklessness too, and her competitive streak. Her moon is also in Aries, which gives her a double dose of that head-first, all-systems-go, Ram energy. Her rising sign, however—the sign that was overhead when she was born—is Sagittarius the Archer. No accident that the first tattoo she got was of a flaming arrow in a flaming bow. Here is where we see Tai's independence, her philosophical streak, and her love of the outdoors.

Her partner in all things both romantic and crime solving is Trey Seaver—his birthday is September 17^th, which gives him a sun sign of Virgo, with all the caution and reservation and love of order conveyed by that sign. It's where he gets his brain power and his overly analytical mode of operation. His rising sign is Taurus, which bestows strength and calmness and deliberation to his nature. And his moon sign? Capricorn—serious and practical, with a strong sense of duty. All three of these are earth signs, a combination that can make him spectacularly and aggressively stubborn, but also faithful and trustworthy, with a good head and grounded personality.

What keeps these two characters from butting heads to the point of mutual destruction? They both have the planet Venus in the sign of Leo, a fiercely loyal and ferociously passionate sign. Tai and Trey each have a fire heart, and as the saying goes, fire calls to fire.

I'm no professional astrologer—tarot is my divinatory tool of choice—but I do have an amateur's love of the stars and their celestial mysteries. If you'd like to learn more, visit your local bookstore; there's plenty of material to get you started. Or better yet, consult a professional astrologer and get your own birth chart done. It's an illuminating process no matter who you are, even if you happen to be a fictional character.

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Tina Whittle writes the Tai Randolph mysteries for Poisoned Pen Press. The sixth book in this Atlanta-based series—Necessary Ends—is scheduled for an April release. Tina is a proud member of Sisters in Crime and serves as both a chapter officer and national board member. Visit her website to follow her on social media, sign up for her newsletter, or read additional scenes and short stories: www.tinawhittle.com.