Day Nine-- Characters so flawed that you just want to hug them and love them and call them George

So, my sister Heidi discovered the mother of all Easter Eggs in my writing--nearly all my main characters have some sort of sleeping issue... whether it's insomnia or talking in their sleep or something. That's a recurrent "flaw" in my characters, but it's not the only one. I really like my characters to have flaws. Most of them are insecure. Several of them have had horribly bad relationships in the past. I've written characters with OCD, agoraphobia, PTSD, migraines, blindness, schizophrenia, and paranoia. No one is perfect, and I like that... I like it a lot. It makes me really get into my characters to know that they're not perfect.

My current characters:

Sidra's father left their family for a woman and she's dealing with the grief of having cared about him once and being a daddy's girl while she despises the man he has become. She is a pyromaniac who feels like a reject at school where a bully has targeted her due to her father's poor choices. She's lonely and afraid to trust anyone. Sidra is easily distracted and spends a lot of her time daydreaming about fire--and then about Asher. Her autoshop teacher has modified his lesson plans to include lots of words that are related to fire just to keep her attention. Her high school vice-principal has the hots for her mom and is nearly encouraging her to misbehave just so he can meet her mom. They, Sidra and the VP, have an ongoing feud with minor pranks as a side plot. Plus, Sidra is hiding a massive secret in regards to her recent paintings of fires.

Asher is hiding an even bigger secret, and he's never even thought of having a normal life. He's been on autopilot since he was six and his mother died at the hands of pyrodemons and his father became insane for vengeance. He's been in training to become a pyrohunter ever since. It's made him feel like his father cared more about vengeance than him. His father has died so he has no way of making peace with that. He really likes Sidra, but he's desperately trying to go slow because the only decent bit of advice his father gave him is that when you meet someone you really want, you'll treat them differently. It's embarrassing for him that his shadowhound feeds off his excitement and keeps going crazy with nervous energy and excitement around Sidra.

So, those are my characters. I love their flaws and exploit them whenever possible.

Speaking of flaws, I'm deep in the land of disgusting sickness. My ears are killing me today, but I think it's just relayed pain from my throat. I've stuffed cotton in them, and it's so much better. Actually, I've got some major auditory sensory issues so it's nice to have noise blocked. It's sad but keeping the cotton in even after I'm better sounds good. If I could wake up without an alarm of some kind (or several alarms) I'd probably go back to wearing ear plugs at night. I'm weird, though... and grossly germy. I love the season of sickness.

On the bright side, I had an entire king-sized bed to myself and I slept wonderfully.

The downside--I had the bed to myself because I'm the queen of germs and gross snoring. C'est la vie. (Such is life--for those that haven't had random French thrown at them their whole lives. My parents both speak French so they've tried to teach us entirely in idioms and phrases. I can also mumble the words to Frere Jacques--though it sounds like nonsense in both English and French, and I might even be insulting someone's mother.)

Have a good Monday everyone!