Our inaugural question provided by solicitation, courtesy of copyeditor Alyssa K. in Houston, Texas:

How do you keep your characters from blending together when you’re working on four series at the same time?

Kind of you to assume that I do! Whether or not that’s actually the case, I’ll leave for the critics to decide. Truth be told, it’s not all that hard if we’re talking about point-of-view characters. The agency of each principal is intrinsically tied to the movements of their respective plots (if it isn’t, then they probably shouldn’t be a POV). I spend so much time in each character’s head that their voice becomes pretty well defined. Some writers describe a phenomenon where their characters begin to write themselves, and while I think this is a bit overstated, it does become easier to tell when a choice or a line of dialog rings discordant with a particular voice or motivation.

Secondary and tertiary characters are trickier. These smaller players occupy so little page space, that it’s easy for them to become cardboard archetypes. There’s room for bit characters in any novel-length work of fiction, but they should be deployed sparingly. Otherwise, it starts to feel like the fictional world is populated by a bunch of NPCs instead of living, breathing people with complex interior lives. 

I’ll be interested to see if readers find similarities between characters across different series. The two young, female protagonists (Effie Strait from Tales of Ciel and Oraluna from Shattered) beg the most obvious comparison, but they arrive at their respective conflicts under vastly different circumstances and each one is furnished with a different emotional toolbox. At least, that’s my opinion. But art is dialogical! Readers bring as much to the experience as the writer invests, and I’m sure many will arrive at divergent, equally valid critiques.