Do you have a character idea, but no desire to write about them? Let me put them in my book!

Cafe Society
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As you may have noticed from several threads I’ve started recently, I’m writing a book. It’s a vampire book from the point of view of a stripper. Yes, high literature, to be sure. Destined to be studied in college courses and analyzed by the greatest of minds.

Anyway, I thought it might be kind of fun to gather some characters from other people. They can even be modified versions of yourself if you like.

So if you’ve got any interest in having me write your character into my book, give me a synopsis. Name, job, personality quirks, anything distinctive. Accent/origin. They can be customers in the nightclub or they can be general friends or they can be bad guys. I need a few prostitutes as well, who are willing to donate blood to vampires (vampires are NOT “out” in my book). I also need some vampires, both good and evil, if you’re so inclined as to give a little backstory on one, feel free.

The book is set in Tucson which has a tradition of really oddball street people as well, if you want to make up an eccentric type character who wanders around parts of town doing strange things. It would fit in perfectly with the setting of Tucson. See Facebook Public Group | Facebook for some examples of real life weirdos.

Even if you’ve just got a great name that you’d like to see in a story, lay it on me as I am currently relying on the phone book and the character name generator because I hate coming up with names outside my circle of main characters.

If you have a situation you’d like to see between your character and another character, feel free to summarize it and I’ll see if I can work it in. (Example: Billy Bob, who is on parole, gets into a bar fight over [blah blah argument/situation])

Disclaimer: by posting your character to this thread (or emailing me–see my profile) you are granting me non-exclusive permission to write the character into my book. Meaning if you want to write about them yourself in the future, that’s not a problem with me. I’ll let you read what I’ve written and let you have some input into changes if you think I’ve misrepresented them.

Anyway, just thought it might be kind of a fun idea. I have full intentions of thanking the membership of the SDMB for their various help throughout this writing process, from things like this through the people who are critiquing as I write. If you really want to be credited by name, PM me your info and if your character makes it into the book, I’ll slap your name in the acknowledgments.

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If this book makes any money, what rights do contributors have concerning the characters they have created?

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they are granting me permission to use the characters, but they retain the rights to use the characters themselves. I am only asking for pretty basic information so these will still be primarily my own creations with just suggested names and attributes from contributors. I will thank anyone in the acknowledgements who wishes to be, should I use their character.

IOW I’m not asking for a two page bio on your character, more like “Billy Bob is an automechanic with a weakness for chick flicks. He was born in Florida and has slightly racist tendencies and a potty mouth.”

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Have you read the Sookie Stackhouse series? The reason I ask is because the whole concept of people donating blood to vampires take place a lot in those books.
Your book sounds really similar to that series.

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Some names, just names:

Damien Knight
Raven Stark
Sasha Honeypalm

Huh, usually I have a thousand fantasy stories in my head, but right now I can’t think of any characters that would be good for a vampire novel. :mad:

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Would you like a real (but now dead) person? Twenty years ago lil bro and I were at the library one rainy afternoon when the front door burst open, and an old man hurried inside. He had long, wildly tangled gray hair & a beard in a similar state, wore one of those thick raincoats common to fishermen, and had bulging eyes.

So it was little surprise when he started shouting: “The mermaids, the vampires! I’ve seen them! The government doesn’t want you to know, but I’ve seen 'em!”

Then he was lead away by one librarian why the counter person apologized and said he’s “like that.”

In real life he was just an old guy who’d lost his marbles, but in the context of a story where vampires are real…

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How much magic is there in the world of your book? Is it just vampires, or are there elves, werewolves, your own original magical creatures, etc? Are there magically gifted humans? Do the above all live together in modern American cities, or is there something like Fairyland? How common or rare are any of the above?

Okay, that’s not so much a plot suggestion as a bunch of getting-you-started writer’s workshop-type plot questions. But it would help to have a rough sense of your world.

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None. You can’t copyright ideas. Not that this amateur, 10th grade level Sookie Stackhouse fanfic has any chance of making money…or being published…or being finished.
Still, if she’s going to try, she should at least use her own imagination and come up with her own ideas like real writers do instead of trying to get other people to do it for her.

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Seppi Papaux is a Swiss cowherd, on a one year sabbatical in Tucson to study American herding methods. Personal quirk: he still dresses in his traditional Swiss costume (see examples here or here ). He is in his early twenties, tall, handsome, blue eyes, muscular physique, with a full black beard.

On the week-ends he plays Alphorn in a Tucson alternative rock band. They had a surprise hit with their rendition of the traditional Swiss song Le Ranz des Vaches. Surprisingly enough he has come to be considered the leading man in the band and because of his singing talents and good looks, he is often pursued by young attractive women. He speaks English fairly well but with a Franco-Provençal accent, which of course makes the women even more interested.

Every Sunday night he gathers his friends from the band and other young hipsters and they have a party. Occasionally he will drink too much [url=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirsch”]kirsch and run through downtown Tucson ringing the cowbell he brought with him from Switzerland. A local policeman, Jerome Jamarillo, has taken a liking to him after one of their encounters when the neighbours called in to report a drunken man running down the straight at 1:00 AM ringing a large cowbell.

In his spare time he does wood-carvings of cows, mountian goats, foxes, deer, bears, etc. These skills will come in handy when he will eventually need a supply of wooden stakes. Also his cowbell can be used as a weapon: striking a vampire in the head with it will knock out the undead creature.

Like most people from the district of Gruyere (Fribourg, Switzerland) he was raised Catholic. He always carries a crucifix around his neck. He goes to church every Sunday morning and is thinking about having a long-term relationship with a young latina señorita that he has met there. Her parents do not approve of her seeing a farmer, they want her to work in the family restaurant and take it over when they retire. Our young hero has convinced her to add enchiladas suizas to the menu at her parent’s restaurant, and this has become one of the most popular dishes.

One situation that would be cool: Seppi has risen one morning before dawn to milk the cows, but when he gets to the barn, he notices in the dark that one of the cows has a dark shape hiding behind it and the cow is lowing in terror. Turning on the electric lights, he reveals the dark shape for what it is: a stripper vampire who was drinking blood from the cow’s neck! She attempts to seduce him, but draws back with a snarl when she sees the crucifix around his neck. The rest of the day, his girlfriend (the spanish-speaking chick) notices that he seems preoccupied; he cannot stop thinking about the beautiful young women who knocked him down and ran away that morning.

Youtube video where you can hear an alphorn:

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Seppi Papaux is a Swiss cowherd, on a one year sabbatical in Tucson to study American herding methods. Personal quirk: he still dresses in his traditional Swiss costume (see examples here or here ). He is in his early twenties, tall, handsome, blue eyes, muscular physique, with a full black beard.

On the week-ends he plays Alphorn in a Tucson alternative rock band. They had a surprise hit with their rendition of the traditional Swiss song Le Ranz des Vaches. Surprisingly enough he has come to be considered the leading man in the band and because of his singing talents and good looks, he is often pursued by young attractive women. He speaks English fairly well but with a Franco-Provençal accent, which of course makes the women even more interested. He also speaks French and German.

Every Sunday night he gathers his friends from the band and other young hipsters and they have a fondue party. Occasionally he will drink too much kirsch and run through downtown Tucson ringing the cowbell he brought with him from Switzerland. A local policeman, Jerome Jamarillo, has taken a liking to him after one of their encounters when the neighbours called in to report a drunken man running down the street at 1:00 AM ringing a large cowbell.

In his spare time he does wood-carvings of cows, mountian goats, foxes, deer, bears, etc. These skills will come in handy when he will eventually need a supply of wooden stakes. Also his cowbell can be used as a weapon: striking a vampire in the head with it will knock out the undead creature.

Like most people from the district of Gruyère (Fribourg, Switzerland) he was raised as a Catholic and always carries a crucifix around his neck. He goes to church every Sunday morning and is thinking about having a long-term relationship with a young latina señorita that he has met there. Her parents do not approve of her seeing a farmer, they want her to work in the family restaurant and take it over when they retire. Our young hero has convinced her to add enchiladas suizas to the menu at her parent’s restaurant, and this has become one of the most popular dishes.

One situation that would be cool: Seppi has risen one morning before dawn to milk the cows, but when he gets to the barn, he notices in the dark that one of the cows has a dark shape hiding behind it and the cow is lowing in terror. Turning on the electric lights, he reveals the dark shape for what it is: a stripper vampire! She attempts to seduce him, but draws back with a snarl when she sees the crucifix around his neck. The rest of the day, his girlfriend (the spanish-speaking chick) notices that he seems preoccupied; he cannot stop thinking about the beautiful young women who knocked him down and ran away that morning.

Youtube video where you can hear an alphorn:

Swiss fondue recipe
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/Articles/Entertaining-Holidays-651/fondue.aspx
(Being from Fribourg, Seppi will use Gruyère and Vacherin in his fondue. The cheese is melted with wine and a little bit of kirsch.)

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Yikes! Sorry for the double post. Ignore the first one.

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I told the OP it sounded like Sookie Stackhouse but she has not responded to my post.

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This character is interesting but it could use a little something to liven it up a bit.

More cowbell, perhaps?

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Just vampires, none of the other stuff. The only magical thing is that vampires exist.

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Go shit in someone else’s thread. I just thought this would be fun, is all.

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You don’t want to overdo it with the cowbell. The character might be seen by some as a comic relief type, but he is supposed to also be heroic and too much cowbell would be weird. I suppose if you wanted to give him more depth you could have him be descended from a Swiss French-speaking father and Swiss German-speaking mother, and he would be torn between those two halves of his ancestry. German-speaking Swiss are serious and hard-working. French-speaking Swiss have a tendency to laugh and party more. His girlfriend’s parents would be fooled by his French-speaking half to think he is not serious. All this changes when he shows him his business plan for dairy farming back home: they realize he is a man of substance and give the kids their blessing (this would be at the end of the book.) At some point Seppi should save his girlfriend from a vampire attack.

I forgot to say that when he catches the vampire in the barn she would have been sucking blook from the cow’s neck. (Some vampires don’t like killing people unless they absolutely have to - this vampire preys on animals sometimes. Cows are handy because you can remove enough blood for a substantial meal without the animal dying.)

ETA: this raises an interesting possibility. If the stripper vampire bites the cow three times, would we get a COW VAMPIRE? I don’t think I’ve ever seen this idea in a vampire story!

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Also the tie-in to the nightclub is that some of Seppi’s musician hipster friends go to the strip joint on occasion, but in a detached, ironic sort of way, not as slavering lust-filled frat boy types. Seppi himself would probably not go there, it wouldn’t fit in too well with his upbringing and character.

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Damien Knight is a rather prominent character in the “official” Shadowrun RPG universe. I know names aren’t exclusive, but just sayin’. :slight_smile:

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Let’s ignore Seppi for a moment. There’s this cow. A cow that theoretically could get preyed upon three times during the course of one book. Now, it can’t be from a lack of opportunity. Unless Seppi is very poor (and coming from a Swiss background surely he must have had at least one -if not two -banker grandfathers hording Nazi gold) he must own multiple cows. And Seppi can’t be an outlier, having the only dairy farm in Tucson, right? So this vampire must specifically be targetting this particular cow.

Why? What’s her backstory? What makes this cow so appealing? Let’s flesh this character out a little bit.

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