Five things that... keep turning up in my stories

There are certain things that seem to get stuck in my for no good reason.

Since I've been editing a few different stories over the last week or so, and also reading over a few of the old drafts I want to edit soon, I've noticed a few things that just keep croping up again and again.

Here are the five things that... keep turning up in my stories.

1. Coffee. I don't drink the stuff. Never tried it, never intend to. I don't even like the smell. So it bemuses me why half the characters I write about are addicted to the stuff.

2. Hamilton Street. It's now turned up in a grand total of six completly unrelated stories. Where does the hero live? Hamilton Street. Where is the restaurant the couple are going to have dinner? Hamilton Street. To my knowledge, I've never been to a Hamilton Street in my life. I've been going around cutting it from different stories and replacing it with different street, roads and lane. I think I've only got one reference to it left and that's in You First. Everyone else has just had to find somewhere else to live.

3. Tony. Never the hero, always the side kick. Does the hero have a friend who needs to turn up, say a few lines and disappear again? Do I need to name a bar man? Is there any sort of male minor character anywhere in the story? You can bet the first name I gave him was Tony. Well, I've been killing all of these repeat offenders off too. There is only one Tony now and I've given him a book all to himself. It's called Fast Track and it's part of a series I'm hoping to write next year.

4. Advertising companies. Does anyone in any of my books have to have a non-specific office job? They'll be working in an Advertising company. Now, I've never worked in one. I've never had some heart felt need to do so. I'm happy for my characters to do other things with their lives, but an astonishing number of them demand to work in Advertising.

5. Foods I don't like. I'm a really fussy eater. I don't eat pasta, rice, cheese, cream, curry, pizza, and a million other different foods. But somehow, put my characters in a restaurant and they'll start ordering things I'd never eat in a million years. It's nice to know I'm not projecting my tastes onto them, but really, I wish for once they would just have something I could eat myself.

So, what about everyone else? Do you find your characters do things like that to you too?

.....

Other news:

Silent Night edits went back to my editor yesterday.
Time To Do edits went back to her today.
I also started working on my own edits for All Grown Up ready to submit it at the end of the month. Lots more to do on that.
And The Morning After is starting to turn from a story idea into an actual story.

All is quite right with my little bit of the world at the moment.

Oh, and the cut off date for TEB's BDSM Anthology called Night of the senses was today, so there should be news about that soon :)

And that's it for now.

Take care, all

Nos Da.