If you’ve read ‘Underneath the Tree’ you might recognise the title of this blog as something someone said in the story.
But you probably do not know where that comes from.
Listen up, it came from an afternoon with the posse. One member was livid over something that had happened and amongst her choice words was ‘beady eyed wombat’. Obviously, I could not leave that alone. As insults go, it’s a good one.
Anywho, it had us laughing.
I’ve used it twice now. I’m going to have to be careful that it doesn’t become Crockett’s favourite insult. (Once in a short story and once in a novel length work, should be okay.)
I don’t want it to become Crockett’s go to like ‘awesome’ was for Dane or ‘slap you upside the head’ was for Ellie. (She should’ve whacked far more people upside the head.)
Characters should have their own speech patterns and word choices, just like we all do. That’s half the fun of creating characters that feel like real people. They say things a particular way, they think however they think, they do not describe things the same was as anyone else.

Currently, I’m enjoying the banter in [Echo Mike Papa].
While I am writing I am aware that these characters are evolving. They know each other better. They tease each other, play off each other, there’s a depth to camaraderie.
(I don’t think I could write cardboard characters that have zero growth or remain unaffected by the things they see, do, or whatever.)
But aging is different.
The problem I have with aging my characters is, Nana.
I also have a Romeo problem.
Both Nana and Romeo are elderly with far more life behind them than ahead. I knew from the get go that their ages would one day be an issue.
Luckily no one knows how old Nana really is … she’s always lied upwardly about her age. One day I’m sure she will be 94, is she there yet? Who knows?
I suspect Romeo is the oldest greyhound ever which is fitting really, because our Romeo (a retired racer) lived until the grand age of 13.8 years. I think Romeo will have less and less “screen time” as he gets older but I am aware that he can NEVER die.
And I’m pretty darned sure that Nana needs to stick around.
Then I started thinking about Tierney. How old is Jonathon Tierney? I would imagine he would fall into the ‘elderly’ category by now.
I know that he and Great Aunt Barbara worked together when he was young. He popped up a bit in the FBI-Byte Series and he’s crossed over to the Veronica Tracey Spy/PI Series.
He played Ben’s grandfather. So, that suggests elderly.
Him I know I can kill. But I don’t want to, yet. He’s got a role to play at the moment.

Today has the “let’s kill someone” vibe running through it like a river.
Maybe I’ll put names on a target and see who I hit.

Time to go see who dies and who survives. 🙂