The development of the character was quirky for me, maybe not for the way 'real' writers develop a character.
The story was going to be a lot different than the way it came out. A lot darker, with the evil mother and daughter compromising a man of means for their financial gain, through trickery and sex.
Well, things changed as I researched romance novels and started remembering what my peers like.
I am not into younger women, but my guy friends are, so she got younger. I had to go through some hoops to get John to be interested in a younger woman too, because that is not me. John is not me either, but pretty close.
Just got done with a younger woman flash-in-the-pan situation and I am amazed that I was able to write this with Suki and John developing a relationship. The relationship in the book sure is not the pace that I like, but the book was long enough already, so that got sped up.
I like women with dark hair and eyes, my guy friends who like that seem to lean toward Eastern Asians as being the most attractive of that category. I am not that particular on the superficialities.
The prettiest woman I almost went out with was Iranian, with long straight black hair. She was Zoroastrian and I was friends with one of her good friends, also Iranian. I was in my early 30s and she in her early 20s, was still put off by the age difference and we never got past my friend telling her about me and getting most everything wrong, like telling her I was studying Engineering instead of Finance.
Trying to think of the best looking woman I ever actually dated. I guess it was around the same time as the previous example. Shoulder length dark brown hair, blue eyes, finishing her Masters in Accounting, 26 years old. We dated for a few months until we got close to graduating and broke up. We both moved to the DC area, but never got back together. None of her appearance is in the book but parts of her personality form Suki's two best friends. She was overly vocal anti-lesbian, which got to be a pain, so Samantha is that way but starts coming out of it as Patricia starts coming out of being such a knee-jerk Leftist. Another trait the brown haired accountant possessed.
Geek guys dream for a hot girl into robotics or something technical, so that was added. I also figured that twenty-something years from now advanced degrees would be more common, so Suki and her best friends all have Masters degrees, Suki has a PhD, as does 25% of her peers from high school, but hers is a little more unique that most people have.
I like the taller women, over 6' is good for me and I prefer them in heels. Most guys don't like women as tall as I like them, so Suki is 5'6" but wears 4"-6" heels. Her mother is only about 5' 1" and is the woman in the book who, if real, I would be most attracted to. There is a scene in the book where Suki's mother, Jung, needs to help guide John away from her and get interested in Suki.
The closest to Suki's physical appearance I ever dated was someone else from college, when I was in ROTC. She was in ROTC also, Taiwanese and two years older than me. I did not think of the resemblance until after Suki was "built". Jung is similar in appearance to a woman I know from the building I work in.
John's best friend, Jackie, has some of the qualities of a woman I used to work with but not a lot.
I needed her to be good at something cool and sporting, so I made her an archer. Then I had to research archery, as I had not done anything competitive there, but I did have a good bow as a child and was a decent shot.
She got an incredible sense of smell just to make one scene work. Comes in handy in the second book too.
I really did not think about her having a woman-on-woman history until I began writing the story and thought she needed a history, even though John is just interested in her present, not her history. Seemed like a good idea through the research that it needed have traumatic element. So she had a traumatic experience with a woman, that she is mostly past. I did get that past from people I know, but made the whole scene up myself and ran it by my friend who helped me with the female characters. She liked it so I kept it. The woman on woman angle was also to make the book kinkier and that is the style of erotica that I prefer.
Suki II begins with a reliving of the trauma.
The closest person to Suki in real life is the lovely lady, and good friend of mine, who posts here as Suki. The sex scenes are based on our online play over the years, but we never dated and she has a great boyfriend now. The scenes are BASED on our chat, not a quote of our chat. I changed a lot of things.
Funny thing, a bar I go to has a rumour that ALL of the characters are based on people who go there. That is completely false. Also, in the book, the bar it could be could also be another bar up the street, where one of the characters actually works and I visit much less often than the other one. A waitress in the story was changed at the request of a bartender friend so she could be in the story.
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