Book Talk: Bringing Your Characters To Life

This week our debut authors answer the question: In your 2025 debut novel, which character would you most like to bring to life and why?

Kristin Offiler, THE HOUSEWARMING (July 29, 2025)

I love this question, but as a writer who adores multiple POVs, it’s so hard for me to choose just one character! THE HOUSEWARMING has four main POVs and two more minor ones, and the story centers around a missing woman. So I think if I had to choose, I would want to bring the missing woman, Zoe Gilbert, to life since she’s only present in the story in memory (until we get one chapter in her perspective). She’s a jewelry designer, an entrepreneur, and a free spirit, and I think she’d be a lot of fun to hang out with. But since my novel is about female friendship, I’d also love to bring her four best friends to life so I could see them all interact in person. I tried to hone in on the unique bond each of my four main POV characters had with Zoe before she went missing. It was a fun challenge to think about their personalities and how they would mesh as a group and also when paired off. So I think seeing them all together would be incredible. And I guess since I’m breaking the rules and bringing everyone to life (lol), we can’t leave out Patricia. She’s the true-crime-obsessed blogger turned podcaster turned author who can’t let go of the theory that Zoe’s friends made her disappear, and thus has made their lives hell by shining the unforgiving true crime spotlight directly on them. I’d love to meet her… but honestly, I’d also be kind of scared to meet her!

Penny Zang, DOLL PARTS (August 26, 2025)

This is such a fun question for me to try to answer because DOLL PARTS centers around the death of a woman’s best friend. Nikki is dead at the start of the book and Sadie moves into her house. The idea of bringing Nikki to life feels like the sneaky choice, like I’m trading ghosts for zombies. Since I wrote this book after the loss of one of my own best friends, the idea of bringing these friends to life makes me really emotional. I’d like to give them another chance to be friends as adults and to make different choices because I can’t go back and do the same.

Emily Krempholtz, VIOLET THISTLEWAITE IS NOT A VILLAIN ANYMORE (November 18, 2025)

I think I’d most love to bring Nathaniel’s twin sister Pru to life—she’s a musician, an eternal optimist, the life of the party, and way more observant and mindful than anyone gives her credit for. She’s a side character in VIOLET, but she also has a lot going on in her own life and I would love to bring her to life so she can explore her dreams and find people who can support her as well as she supports the people she loves. Also, she’s basically an overgrown theater kid, and as one of those myself I just think she’d be a blast to hang out with.

Gloria Huang, KAYA OF THE OCEAN (January 7, 2025)

Iolana is Kaya’s best friend, and I’m really proud of the way she turned out–very strong, confident, and funny, but also caring and kind. She’s somewhere between the kind of friend I’d love to have and the kind of person I always aspire to be. I’d be thrilled to meet her in real life, although to be honest, she’s sort of an amalgamation of the many amazing friends I’ve had throughout my life. So in a way–she was already part of real life, and I wrote her into Kaya’s story!

C.I. Jerez, AT THE ISLAND’S EDGE (March 18, 2025)

Dolores, Lina’s cousin in AT THE ISLAND’S EDGE turned out to be one of my favorite characters. At one point I had to do some serious re-writing because she was beginning to take over the story! I was very intentional about allowing her to be a bit of an “on the page vixen” (at least on the outside), but the depth of her personality and her wisdom came from her evolution in the words. Dolores has an air of mystery about her. We don’t get all the details of her backstory or what made her who she is, but we do see that Teo instantly connects with her and even though she’s young, Lina leans on her for strength and wisdom–multiple times! One of my daughters is currently reading the book and she recommended Dolores get her own book at some point. The idea struck me. Now I realize, that could become a distinct possibility at some point down the line.

Catalina Margulis, AGAIN, ONLY MORE LIKE YOU (April 29, 2025)

Oh gosh, probably Sam, Ally’s love interest, and Dan, Carmen’s husband. I had so much fun writing the male characters of my book. It felt like total play to imagine what they’d say and do, and getting to imbue them with so much humor. I really had a blast writing Sam and Dan, especially. Maybe to a fault, I didn’t want to romanticize them–at least too much. I wanted to make them human, and real–like the men I’m friends with and have known all my life. Most of them are pretty funny, and they can be real sweethearts too. But they can be jerks and insensitive and selfish–in a way that many of my female friends aren’t. I might be typecasting here, but that’s what was important to me. To write the men as I know them to be, versus who I as a woman wish they would be. Because they’re human after all. They have faults and they make mistakes and they’re not perfect–just like me.

Alexandria Faulkenbury, SOMEWHERE PAST THE END (May 20, 2025)
What a great question! I feel like there are lots of little pieces of myself in both Alice and Teresa, so I don’t think I need to bring them to life to really know them, if that makes sense. There are also plenty of characters I would not want to be walking around in this world. So I will have to go with Lorraine as the character I would bring to life. Her warmth and depth of caring are things everyone dealing with trauma should automatically be given. She is like a hug personified and who couldn’t use an extra hug these days, right?