I can has muse! I mentioned on Tuesday I'm fleshing out the hero of my next romance proposal, a martial artist. It's always nice to find a face and sometimes a body to assign to a character as they're taking shape in one's head. I know a ton of writers who do this—some even have entire binders crammed with print-outs and clippings of their visual character inspirations, past, present and future.
For some writers a picture can jumpstart their imaginations, and for others they're more like illustrations, helping the writer visualize a nuanced facial expression or the flex of a particular muscle to better transcribe it into words. I even know authors who go the Frankenstein route, taking, say, Antonio Banderas's face and mentally taping it onto David Beckham's body, maybe adding Vin Diesel's voice. Lucky for me I found both the face and body of my latest muse in one handy package.
Said package's name is John Wayne Parr, and he's a 34-year-old Australian middleweight Muay Thai kickboxing champ. He's made researching this book really quite pleasant. Though my characters tend to evolve as I write and rarely resemble their original inspirations by the time the book is finished, I suspect I will very much enjoy letting Parr rattle about in my skull in the coming weeks.
And while my hero-in-progress isn't an Aussie, Parr is, so let's not waste a chance to ogle his accent. Here's a pre-fight interview from a match in 2008:
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