by Charlotte Morganti
Authors try to give their characters a signature trait – something that will separate them from all the others in a book.
Here’s how I found one of the signatures of Gabe, the private investigator in my novel The End Game. Many years ago, a group of us, all single and in our twenties, went on a pub crawl. Mid-afternoon we discovered an Irish tavern. It was jammed and hopping.
Miraculously, we found standing room at the bar. We ordered drinks and started people watching. One of the bartenders, who was preparing the glasses for Irish coffees, caught our attention.
He lined a dozen or so of the glasses along the bar, took up a position a few feet from the head of the line of empty glasses, and pitched sugar cubes at them. Without fail, each cube landed in its designated glass. That bartender should have tried out for Major League Baseball.
I filed that sugar-cube-tossing bartender away until I wrote The End Game. The fictional Gabe Gabrieli is a former lawyer, now passing his days tending bar, occasionally finding missing teenagers, or investigating crimes. Not many of the patrons at his bar demand Irish coffees except in the winter. The season doesn’t matter to Gabe—he still sets up the glasses on the bar and tosses sugar cubes at them whenever there’s a lull in drink orders.
Rarely does a cube miss its target. Patrons have started a pool based on when Gabe will miss a toss. The pot’s grown to the point where people are making retirement plans based on winning the pool. I doubt anyone will ever win that bet.
One of the other primary characters in the novel is Rhonda, the owner of Tiffany’s Café, a gathering spot in the novel. Her signature trait was inspired by a high school friend.
As an aside, I watched a YouTube video about shifting gears on a dump truck because I thought it would help me describe her to you. Unfortunately, the guy on the video either had a go-pro camera on his forehead or was filming with a phone that he kept swinging around, and I became dizzy not long after we got to fourth gear. Plus, he used terminology that he obviously expected viewers to know, and I did not, like split gear (I think – or maybe splitter – who knows.) The whole thing made my head hurt.
I know for a fact that if I asked my high school friend to explain the gears on a dump truck, or even a semi, she would do it in plain English and without making me dizzy. My friend grew up around trucking. She knew how to drive a dump truck by the time she was 13. She won a truck rodeo at one point. The last I heard, she owned a local long-haul trucking company. She lives life, is fearless, and when we were teens, had attitude. I haven’t seen her for several years, but I’m betting that attitude is still evident. And I bet she still says “kee-ryste.”
Rhonda, the owner of Tiffany’s Café, isn’t my friend. But parts of her might be. She takes no prisoners and says “kee-ryste” now and then. Her husband is a long-distance trucker, and if you think Rhonda wouldn’t be able to take one of those semis out on the road, you’d be mistaken.
I have several favorites among the characters in The End Game (what author doesn’t love her darlings?) But Gabe and Rhonda top the list. You can find out more at charlottemorganti.com.
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I just finished this book and loved it. The characters seem real, with both flaws and strengths, and there’s a strong sense of place in the fictional small town. Lots of small details, like the sugar-cube toss, and information about mine exploration build credibility. The tension and danger just keep mounting as Gabe battles all sorts of obstacles to solve the crime.