Behind the Curtain: Characters, continuity and cameos (Patreon)

I’ve been thinking about writing this down for a while, mostly just as a fun little thought experiment regarding the characters that have appeared in my now 40-plus (!) book bibliography. 

Occasionally, not often, because these stories tend to be kept hidden away from other work I’ve done, people have asked about the inspiration behind characters, their design, name choices, and appearances as described. 

The answer is a boring one: it depends.

Most of my characters are inspired by people I see in real life, consenting friends, public figures, and internet personalities. Other times, I’ll have simply an archetype that I’m writing for, maybe only a name or general idea of what that person looks like, and then their personality, backstory, and conflicts fall into place as the story is written. 

More often than not, though, I have a few characters or people in mind. And even more often, when I’m looking to get the creative wheels spinning, I’ll insert some already established characters into my stories, sometimes as placeholders or sometimes as a repurposed character with a different name or backstory.

While auditing my characters, it turns out I have reused quite a few of them in various stories, and I thought my readers might find interesting which ones appear in multiple stories!

Here’s a little behind-the-curtain for you…

Starting very early in my first published works, those that are a lot more rough around the edges and don’t involve any mind control elements, there are several characters that return in other forms. 

My first story, “Going in Blind,” features an accidental blind date between two straight women named Paige and Alex. The Paige in this story is the same Paige from “The Beach,” in which she falls madly in love with her best friend, Hannah, during an afternoon at an enchanted nudist beach. This couple has been featured in two Patreon-exclusive sequels and will reappear (briefly) in a future installment. 

Alex from that story is described as a short, full-bodied blonde who works as a weather girl at a local TV station. Sound familiar? She’s essentially the same character as Ashley, who appears in one of the Brianna installments, “Breaking Vows.” In that one, she is transformed into a desperate lesbian for her older colleague and co-anchor, Leslie. 

Alex is also the name of a character in the first installment of “Double Exposure,” in which a mischievous photographer makes the soon-to-be bride fall into an erotic entanglement with her overbearing future mother-in-law, Megan. Megan, as it turns out, is the same inspiration for Leslie from “Breaking Vows.” That’s two stories featuring “Megan” and “Alex” as a mind-controlled couple!

The same Megan also appears in another story from a couple of years ago called “Strangers on a Train,” in which a mysterious man on a commuter train rewrites reality and makes Megan believe she’s a lesbian married to a young Latina woman named Sharon. Sharon will also return in a future story. This Megan is not the same Meghan from the first Lesbian Mind Control Stories, which features the protagonist Agatha.

Back to those earlier stories, the two lead characters from “An Unexpected Reunion” return together in a future mind control story. Cari and Stephanie, the main characters from “Reunion,” are the inspiration and models for the two leads in another Brianna story, “Change of Heart.” Stephanie is the bride-to-be, Morgan, and Cari becomes her future sister-in-law turned new fiancée, Heidi. Cari also appears in another story, “The Ex,” in which her vindictive ex uses chemical influence to ensure she never sleeps with another man. Her name remains Cari in that one!

Skipping ahead to another entry in the Lesbian Mind Control Anthology series, let’s look at “Budding Romance,” which tells the story of a spellbound rose ending up in the wrong hands and inextricably linking young college coed Nadia with her boyfriend’s cold, distant mother, Michelle.

Well, that’s not it for these two lovebirds. They appear together again just a few stories later in another plant-based enchantment, “The Rare Lotus,” in which a young college sophomore named Emma and her beautiful older neighbor, Abigail, become enthralled with one another by a pheromatic plant that was meant to rekindle Abigail’s sex drive. Nadia in “Budding Romance” is essentially Emma. Michelle, meanwhile, is reborn in the new story as Abigail. These two are based on a popular content creator on social media and a sitcom actress whom I’ve always found very underappreciated.

Finally, the character Katrina, who first appears in “Magnificent,” in which a magician and host of a reality dating competition turns the two runners-up into lesbian lovers, shares the same inspiration as the character Zoe from “VIP Status.” While not the same exact character by personality or demeanor, physically, they are the same. A version of her is also set to appear in the next Brianna-focused story, which is likely to come out in a couple of months. 

So, what do you think? Interesting? For those of you who are well-read through my story list, can you see the similarities? Surprised by any duplicate characters or relationships?

Let me know in the comments.

P.S., I’ll have a new sneak peek coming in a couple of weeks. Another sequel, this one featuring The Stranger from “Impressionable Minds.”