Are my characters full figured or always slim? That is a good question because I try to avoid stereotypical characters such as a woman with an eye watering figure – because I don’t have an eye watering figure – or a Superman with rippling muscles. I want my characters to be like you and me, real and believable, warts and all. I realise now that my characters’ figures reflect their lives and trials and tribulations.
In my first book, Perilous Love, Gabrielle thought of herself as thin, shapeless and uninteresting. That shapeless figure would be her saviour when she and husband Adrian, whom she despised, were badly betrayed as world war one exploded over Europe. Adrian, the quintessential upper-class Englishman is very conscious of his masculine physique until injury renders him helpless. The only way they narrowly escaped capture was to disguise themselves as male peasants on the terrifying journey to safety.
In Lies of Gold, Julian has the hard, toned body of a soldier, trained in unarmed combat. Without those years of hard living, he could not have stopped the ruthless traitor peddling young people for gold. Katherine, the woman Julian loved and lost, is more worried about her children’s safety than her figure, until Julian comes back into her life.
War changes a man. For Harry Connelly in The Proposition, it’s down to a bullet on the Western Front or arrest and prison at home. Severely injured, he falls beside the body of a dead soldier with the same build, same colouring—his one chance of a new life. What the hell—he swaps identity discs. Now Andrew Conroy, repatriated home with a limp and a small pension, he’s more worried about being caught than his physique. When he meets Lacey Haines, he sees a beautiful woman. Lacey has been a nurse on the European front and she needed strength and stamina more than she needed a reed-thin figure. Does it matter to Andrew? Not likely.
In The Woman Behind the Mirror, Sarah Forsythe’s lovely face and 
hourglass figure are her assets, and she’s very aware of that when eloping to the American colonies. When everything she trusts deserts her, Sarah must sell those assets to survive – and in that mirror, every day, she sees a loathsome harlot in a gambling club. It’s not until Neil McAllister, who by the way has a damn good body, investigates her for possible bank fraud, that she has the courage to see herself as she once was.
It never ceases to amaze me that every book has a different story to tell with characters that draw us in and, in a lot of cases, characters we can relate to. That’s the beauty of it.
What do you think?
Read the next blog in the blog hop by going here.
The Woman Behind the Mirror
The Proposition
Lies of Gold—Silver Historical for 2019: Coffee Pot Book Club
“I realise now that my characters’ figures reflect their lives and trials and tribulations.”
That’s so true, Jan!! I think it might have been a news article, around the time of one of the Olympics, that showed the different body shapes and sizes of different athletes—it totally drove home for me how every person’s body is shaped by their life. Such an incredibly powerful connection to realise.
Jan, I like this post very much! No pattern for your heroines at all. They fit exactly what they need to be.
Thank you Dee.
You describe the women in your story line so accurately in the era you are relating to and the readers can use their imagination.
Maybe younger readers would have a different thought
Thank you very much Frances.