Vic Marriott asked Julia Glass:

I find you characters to be genuine and unique and the real source of the power in your stories. Can you address where these characters come from and the process that creates them?

Julia Glass As I wrote in an answer to another question today, the characters are everything to me. Every story I write begins with a character in a very specific predicament or crisis (or, perhaps, faced with a risky opportunity). I build a life and relationships around that character, and only then does the true direction of the narrative take shape. When a new character comes to me--which can occur suddenly or gradually, over time--I don't really want to know where he or she comes from. I've often said that I like being a little "dumb" about my motivations and themes while I'm working on a book. (Once it's published, readers are usually the ones who tell me what it's "about"!) That said, I have noticed that certain characters grow out of aspects of myself: usually aspects I'm not too comfortable or happy about. The best example, perhaps, is Percy Darling, the protagonist of "The Widower's Tale." He is very much a reflection of my premature curmudgeonliness and habitual resistance to change of so many kinds. Fenno McLeod--and I only saw this long after bringing him to life--personifies, in part, my instinctive tendency toward caution and a certain guardedness. I make an effort to overrule that tendency as often as I can.

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