Jo here.
I thought I’d pick up a question that referred, in part, to my books.
Janga asked, “How do you visualize your character? I know, Jo, that you give your readers "portraits" of the Rogues on your website, but did the images come before or after the creation of the characters?” Thanks for the question, Janga. E-mail me your address, and I’ll send you a book.
I never use pictures to create my characters. It doesn’t work for me because a picture, even the best portrait, is static. It catches a person in one moment, and only one aspect of them. I think we’ve all had the experience of seeing a photo of someone we know well and for a moment not recognizing them. Yet that is them. It’s not typical, perhaps, or light and shadow has created different angles, but it is as real as the more familiar.
A movie or TV program is much more complex and this would be more useful, but it still just doesn’t work with the way my creativity does its thing. I suspect that it remains external. The images I see that I write down are in my head not in front of my eyes.
In fact, I come up with the externals of my characters in the way we meet and learn real people -- in bits and pieces, light and shadow. In ways of moving and the shifts of muscle that create hard lines at one moment and soft at another.
I’d find it hard to describe someone I knew in specifics. I could say 5 foot 10, brown hair…. But then, what brown? And except for a few obsessive people, hair shape doesn’t stay the same. It blows in the wind, it gets roughed up by hats and hands, it lies flat in the rain….
People are like music. They’re all movement and change and though I'll start with some dimensions and details, they take on structure bit by bit as I write the book. My current hero has dark hair and eyes, which would be unusual in England, so I gave him an Italian mother. A disreputable one, which adds to his general image problems. Just because, I made him quietly impressive without being tall or large, and I realized later that that would be the likely result of a neglected childhood. Then later still, how it would make his schooldays particularly difficult, which was always part of the story. He's not just a soldier, he's a fighter from the cradle, so I realized he wouldn't have perfect features, even if he'd been born with them, so he has a crook in his nose and some scarring. But his profile from some angles is beautiful. And so it goes.
I truly don't have a clear image of my characters, even when I finish a book.
However, I do sometimes come across a picture that reminds me of one of my characters, which is where those Rogues pictures came from. I do remember that when I first saw the cover for An Arranged Marriage
I thought, “That’s not Nicholas.” But the image quickly grew on me and became an aspect of Nicholas.
The cover of Unwilling Bride is also not Lucien – it’s too hard and slick, rather like a thirties movie star – but again, it captured something real.
It was the Francis one that started me on this, however. This is a portrait from slightly after the Regency and I just thought, “That’s Francis.” Quiet, gentle, sensitive, firm, intelligent….
But it's okay if these aren't your image, as long as your image works for you.
The other image I’ve found that’s spot on is the period portrait I’ve assigned to Diana, Countess of 
Arradale, Rothgar’s lady. It is just so very her. I haven’t found anything for Rothgar himself, however.
Lastly, there’s the startling picture for the omnibus edition, Three Heroes. When I opened the jpg for that, I truly couldn’t believe my eyes. I had send descriptions of my characters, but how one earth had the art department got it so right? There was Van in the middle, dashing and active; Con on the left, stocky and steady; and Hawk on the right, the hyper-intelligent military nerd. Hawk’s just a bit sulky-looking, but that was the only quibble I could make.
We authors pray to the cover gods every time, and sometimes they smile.
The casting game is one I find hard to play, and some suggestions are truly weird to me. I think I remember someone once saying Mel Gibson could play Rothgar. Mel Gibson?!? Let’s add a few more of those ?!?!?!?!?!?!
But by all means let’s play. What actors could you see playing one of the Wenchs' characters?
If you’re a writer, how do you come up with the physical presence of your characters?
And may the cover gods always smile.
Jo :)