This is how I wrote it:

Chapter: Stinky

LOL—thanks, Michael Adewunmi. Your response took me on quite the ride, too. Here’s a handkerchief for next time you get the reading-sweats ;-)

This story is part of a series I’m writing about a bunch of uni students in a couple of share houses. I’ve given it the working title Share house. (See, there’s some creative genius, right there in that title.)

I don’t link to the series at the bottom of each post because I’m publishing it in The Weekly Knob and, while I hope people discover my other work through this series, I don’t want to lure readers away from that publication with a big link saying ‘Oi! More of this series is over here!’ (I don’t even know if the series is going to work out, so I don’t want to make a promise I can’t keep.)

I don’t manage to publish every week, but each story that I do write is submitted to The Weekly Knob in response to the prompt provided by Aura Wilming and S Lynn Knight. They publish it, but first they make teeny, tiny edits that enormously improve my stories, and I’m grateful for their input.

I’m also saving up a few of the old prompts that I missed and (if I get some super-productive down time) I’d like to write up stories for those, and publish them on the story-in-progress page, still acknowledging the source of the prompt.

So, you asked about Amber…

Amber features in a few other chapters, including Smug (from Loni’s point of view) and Snuffed (from Scotty’s point of view). In the former, we learn that she’s a smart cookie who is pretty quick to pick up what’s going on, and willing to call people on their bullshit. In the latter, we learn that she has golden curls, so she doesn’t look all that much like me.

Aside from the hair, she’s daintier than me, maybe like a Disney Princess version of me. So, basically, she’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Er…

Okay, not really.

She does share a few of my character traits—all of my characters do, I think, otherwise I wouldn’t know where to start on them. I need something in common with them, even if it’s a tiny thing. Amber has been known to

• spend too much time thinking about the right words for what she’s thinking about
• think about things in long, hyphenated strings
• knowing what’s going on without paying much attention to it, and frustrating teachers as a result

and of all the characters I’m writing about, she’s probably the one I can relate to the most. But she’s most definitely not me.