Character As Fate

My recent novels are built around character. Over a long life I've discovered that character is fate. We build our character through our daily choices, and that is what usually governs how we succeed or fail in various aspects of our daily life. Character is the most important quality in our actual lives.

And yet, the novels that deal with the character of my protagonists are my least successful, at least judging from my reader ratings here and at Amazon and elsewhere. Readers are not interested in it, and prefer stories in which other forces, from sinister corporations to terrible diseases, govern the outcomes of the novels. I see it in my ratings: my earlier stories, which relied less on the complex character of my heroes and heroines, do better than those which depict private character as the deciding element in the resolution of the story.

So I have drifted from the temper of these times. That is an old man's privilege. I grew up with the idea that character, self-government, is the main tool of happiness and success. But that is no longer anything that interests coddled generations. And my success as an author declines accordingly.