When secondary characters won't let go

Before I start this post:

What About Him is now available for sale from Dreamspinner Press, All Romance eBooks and Amazon. It's also listed on Goodreads. I love seeing my work on websites like that!

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Now for the post I intended to make...


I'm nearly finished the first draft of a novel. I should be finished it, I'm that close to the end, but I can't. I've written maybe five hundred words on it in the last ten days because I'm arguing with a secondary character.

Mrs Harrison, David's mother, is not a nice person. Perhaps that's why she won't let me finish the book and give David the ending he deserves. The nasty woman keeps spouting narcissistic and homophobic vitriol in my ear and I just want to kick her in the backside and throw her out of the story.

She won't go.

David and Bernard are all set to share a lovely interlude by the creek and David is ready, finally, to admit what Bernard means to him, and what happens?

His mother turns up.

Why would she leave her comfortable house in Brisbane to go to the remote cattle property the boys have settled on? I don't know what she's doing there yet, or how she found out exactly where they are, she hasn't told me, but she's there and ready to cause all the trouble she can if she doesn't get what she wants.

David is scared enough of discovery as it is, particularly since it means a hefty jail sentence if he's found out--and that's the best-case scenario. Remember, poor Carl was bashed in Between Love and Honor. His mother is the one who'd make sure David suffered like that too.

I'd better get back to work and sort it out, although my family will complain again that I'm spending far too much time sitting on the back deck staring at the sky.