Adam asked Neil S. Plakcy:

Hi Neil. You are so prolific. What comes first, the idea or the character? Has any character surprised you? When you thought they would be the star of a romance and ended up in the center of a mystery?

Neil S. Plakcy It's a mix of both for me. I might start thinking about the next Aidan & Liam bodyguard book, and a plot will come to me. Or a character will start talking to me, as Kimo has done in the Mahu series, and I'll start following what he's saying and thinking about the plot he wants me to investigate. Sometimes it's a setting-- I'm working on a book now set along the Delaware Canal in Pennsylvania in 1873, right after the end of the Civil War, and I had to figure out who the characters were. And most recently on that book, a new character stepped on stage and suddenly I was writing like mad as he came to life.

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