Characters Who Stay

I was fourteen when I created my first book character: David Evans. His name came from the popular daytime gothic horror TV show in the US, Dark Shadows. His first name came from the boy character, David Collins, and his surname came from the waitress, Maggie Evans. Both characters had no siblings and lived with their dads, so my character was a motherless single child for that first year.

I wasn’t good at writing horror stories then, so my David played sports. Many of his stories were influenced by the novels of John R. Tunis and my own experiences playing sports. Like me, his favorite sport was baseball and, like me again, he played a lot of country sandlot softball and old-time mountain ball games with farmers and Amish. (If you’ve never played true mountain ball with Amish players, you’re missing out on some amazing feats of athleticism.)

Because I grew up in the country until I was nine and lived in a rural town afterwards, Dave was a country kid, too, and lived on Myers Ridge, a farm community outside a small town called Ridgewood. He had a pet dog (like Lassie, but a male golden retriever) named Rembrandt. Did I mention Dave liked art like me? Rembrandt appeared in a few of Dave’s stories before I gave him a new owner.

I was fifteen when I gave Dave a best friend: Leonard Campbell Stevens. Lenny was the first of my characters to have a middle name. He was one hundred percent based on me, which allowed me to change Dave’s personality, give him a family, and concentrate more on writing about the supernatural and less about sports. He continued living in the country and became friends with his neighbor, Verawenda Erickson, who was based on a Scandinavian girl I knew. She took ownership of Rembrandt and was best friends with Dave’s twin sister, Amy.

Verawenda became Vree when I gave her the initials VRE (her middle name is Renee) and made her the artist and Dave an investigator into the supernatural. These early things-that-bump-in-the-night stories were influenced by the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries, as well as the six-volume Brains Benton set on my bedroom bookshelf.

I was seventeen when I stopped writing stories, and thirty-six when I began again in earnest. David Evans reappeared once more on paper (though not before I typed him into my clunky word processor first), all grown up, a bachelor artist, and the owner of Rembrandt. By then, I had a website, so I published several of his stories there. He still lived on Myers Ridge and investigated the supernatural, so he encountered all kinds of ghosts, magic, and other preternatural phenomena.

And then, Vree and Lenny appeared in a story, but were teenagers again. They, too, lived on Myers Ridge and were Dave’s neighbors. Amy returned for a story, all grown up and a pop music star. She vanished mysteriously, which became a published e-novella, Kismet, after three years of editing and changing everyone’s names, ages, and occupations.

After all these years, Dave, Vree, Lenny, and Amy still live in my imagination. And you can find them in my books still available on the internet, and the rereleases I’m still in the process of publishing. Like me, some of them have gone through changes that come with growing up and getting old. But unlike me (and the rest of us) some of them will always be teenagers in my new releases, but only as long as my memories of childhood never fade.

Thanks for joining me today. Stay well and keep on reading, my friends.

Steve, 3/18/2024

This post “Characters Who Stay” copyright © 2024 Steven Leo Campbell at stevecampbellcreations.com – All rights reserved.