Kory M. Shrum
Hi Lisa!
I don't know how I missed this question! So sorry! But I'll answer it now:
Jesse Sullivan has been kicking around in my head for as long as I can remember. I can't quite recall when exactly she showed up, only that one day I realized there was a reluctant heroine with mismatched shoes and lots of snark hanging out in there and it seemed so perfectly natural for her to be doing so :). The details of her life and story were different in the beginning though.
She didn't come to be a death replacement agent and her villain wasn't the same villain until later drafts. (We're talking about five years worth of drafts). Around 2008 I read a book by Janet Evanovich that was talking about the craft of writing and about how a character's job is really important--and I realized what I was missing was a cool job for Jesse. I started searching for one around the same time I did a student teaching job in Europe. One hot August day I was hiking up the side of the Italian mountainside hauling a whole bunch of luggage to a little bungalow when I was quite certain I was going to die. In those feverish moments, something clicked. Dying, I thought. Dying for a Living. Jesse dies for a living! And it just went from there. I rebuilt her whole world from the concept of what that must be like, what the industry must be like, etc. And voila! She emerged, the Jesse you love.
And thank you for loving her! :D
I don't know how I missed this question! So sorry! But I'll answer it now:
Jesse Sullivan has been kicking around in my head for as long as I can remember. I can't quite recall when exactly she showed up, only that one day I realized there was a reluctant heroine with mismatched shoes and lots of snark hanging out in there and it seemed so perfectly natural for her to be doing so :). The details of her life and story were different in the beginning though.
She didn't come to be a death replacement agent and her villain wasn't the same villain until later drafts. (We're talking about five years worth of drafts). Around 2008 I read a book by Janet Evanovich that was talking about the craft of writing and about how a character's job is really important--and I realized what I was missing was a cool job for Jesse. I started searching for one around the same time I did a student teaching job in Europe. One hot August day I was hiking up the side of the Italian mountainside hauling a whole bunch of luggage to a little bungalow when I was quite certain I was going to die. In those feverish moments, something clicked. Dying, I thought. Dying for a Living. Jesse dies for a living! And it just went from there. I rebuilt her whole world from the concept of what that must be like, what the industry must be like, etc. And voila! She emerged, the Jesse you love.
And thank you for loving her! :D
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