One of the things I find hard to do is remember all the little details of my characters. Stuff like how long their hair is, what weapon they like, how old they are. I can remember all the sordid details of their pasts, but those sort of trivia facts? Leon changed his age three times during the first draft of one of my novels.
I've tried all sorts of things to keep track. Cue cards, notebooks, spreadsheets. They don't work so well for me. However, I've now found something that actually seems to work. Wikispaces. It's, well, a wiki. You just go to
www.wikispaces.com, sign up for an account, and put stuff in it. The joy of it is, you can click on a word you've typed, such as 'battler' and make an instant link to a new page by that name. Click the link and it'll ask you to make the page if you haven't already. Just type a link to the page you left and make it the same way. Fast, easy, I can update it whenever. I can access it on the internet so I can get to it whatever the machine I'm using, and I can even save it locally. I'm having fun with it.
Since I decided I would pay for an account, my wikispaces is private. It's not something anyone else would want to read anyway, I'd think. And it's chocked full of spoilers galore. Best part of it is, since it's all integrated, if you type a new name for a character in and make the link and click on it, you'll know immediately if it's a name you've used before, since it'll bring up the page you made earlier. No more reusing names without realizing it! There's, um, two different Autumns in two different series. And Blue has shown up so many times that I've given up and started doing it deliberately, just to see if anyone calls me on it down the road.
I don't know if wikispaces will work for everyone, but I know I'm certainly happy with it and I'm pimping it to all my author friends.
In writing news, I'm working on a novel that Del Rey is looking at. No promises yet on them buying it, but I have my toes crossed. No word yet on selling books four and five of the Sylph series, but I am happy that people seem to really like book three. That makes me very happy, especially given how it's not the standard sort of romantic fantasy novel. Thanks, everyone.
