1: What is your character’s full name?

Margaret Audrey Murray. She is named after her grandmother Maisie, but her parents “Americanized” it to Margaret. However, she’s proud of her Scottish roots and prefers to go by Maisie, particularly among casual acquaintances, friends, and family. Her byline is “Margaret Murray” though, because she thought it would be taken slightly more seriously by the male idiots she has to work with. She thinks it’s strange to feel weird if a boss or some kind of authority figure calls her Maisie, nevertheless she feels strange about it. Her father always called her Margaret, maybe that’s why. Please don’t call her Maggie, Peg, or Peggy. She won’t bite your head off, but the only response you’ll get out of her is a slight cringe.

2: What is their gender?

She be girl-shaped.

3: Are they human, another species or another type of being?

She also be human.

4: Is the character a protagonist, antagonist, or something else entirely?

She’s so protagonist that she’s the main character.

5: What is their birthdate, if known? How old does this make them during the course of the story?

October 31, 1909. The Murrays have a history of abilities beyond the norm, but not many of them inherit the trait, so to speak–maybe one or two in every other generation or so. But the things a gifted Murray can do are so unusual that stories get passed down. Could Maisie’s Halloween birthday be why she has the ability to talk to ghosts, or is that all rubbish and merely a coincidence?

6: What are their colours, hair type, height and build? Hairy?!?!

Dark brown hair, thick and wavy, a very warm shade in which red highlights are easy to see. Eyes to match, minus the red highlights, because that would be kinda creepy. She’s about average height–5′ 2″ or so–and has a soft, round build that’s closer to being slightly plump than slender. Normal and healthy.

7: Do they have any specially distinguishing features? Tattoos, interesting scars or piercings?

8: How do they dress, accessorize and wear their hair?

Maisie likes to keep up with fashion and feel pretty, but it’s not everything to her. She’s a career woman with special interests, so she’ll sacrifice high fashion in favor of being comfortable and practical. Her ensembles are always conservative but attractive. It was pretty difficult not to look good in this era, TBH. She wears minimal makeup, saves lipstick for socials and going out at night, and isn’t all that interested in jewelry or shoes. She hasn’t a single pair of uncomfortable shoes, JSYK. A practical or cute hat is always nice, though! (Practical for work, cute for all other times!) Her hair is a wee bit longer than most women wear theirs–not like Veronica Lake long, but her thick waves do look better when they’re allowed more room to spread out.

She doesn’t wear fur. In fact, none of our characters are allowed to wear fur except for Violet. 😀 Because we are anti-fur-on-humans, no matter how popular and chic it was to wear furs in this time period.

She does wear glasses, though, but only when she has to read or examine something closely. It’s quite bothersome to have inherited her father’s weak eyes. Usually she keeps her glasses on a chain around her neck, because practical. She spent years being called a spinster librarian for it, at which she would come back with, “Correction! I’m a spinster journalist!” But more recently she got one of the new, trendy styles, the “cat eye”, and her opinion about having to wear glasses improved.

9: What is their personality like? Introverted or Extroverted? Polite or rude? Do they have a sense of humor?

Nice, sympathetic,  proper but caring and passionate, she has a good sense of humor and isn’t afraid of a little self-depreciation. Sometimes she can get impatient or angry with people, but only when they’re rude first, or if she really believes their attitude is detrimental and they need some straightening out. She’s nosy, has been known to get pushy and meddle in other people’s business, and will indulge in some good, old-fashioned eavesdropping, but never for malicious intent. She’s not a gossip.

10: Are they popular or well-liked? How do they treat people around them?

Most people seem to like her, except when she meddles in their affairs, or if their name is Violet. Maisie is polite, friendly, and kind to others, and she thinks everyone should have a fair chance.

11: Do they have any special strenghts, talents or abilities that set them apart from most other people? Is there anything they are unusually good at, or has special knowledge about?

Well, she’s a born journalist. She loves getting wind of a good story and investigating until she has all the facts, and she’s good at it. She took psychology classes to help better understand people and their motives, and she can tell when someone is lying or omitting.

However, that may pale in comparison to the fact that ghosts talk to her. Sometimes good spirits, sometimes angry ones, but they all have one thing in common: they are unable to rest due to unfinished business, and Maisie has to help them sort it out.

Her first ghost communication took place when she was five years old. Near her home, there was a small public park with a bench facing the road. Every afternoon, Maisie used to see a young woman sitting on that bench. Maisie couldn’t tell quite how old she was, only that she looked fully grown in size, and that she was much younger than her mother. At first Maisie paid her no particular mind, because nothing about her looked out of the ordinary. It was on a day when she and Joey were walking home from the park to have dinner, that she passed by the lady close enough to see that she had been crying. Maisie felt very bad for her, but her mom called them from the porch and she had to go home.

The next time Maisie saw the lady, she walked up to her to see if she was still sad. She was. Onoz. Maisie started talking to her, asking her if she had lost something, and if she could help her search. Joey and their friend Pinky (real name Amanda) stood looking at them from a few feet away, seemingly puzzled. When Maisie waved them over, they asked who she was talking to. Maisie turned to the young woman and asked what her name was, but she didn’t reply. Suddenly she seemed somehow distant, as if she wasn’t really there, even though Maisie could clearly see her.

It turned out that Joey and Pinky couldn’t see the lady at all. At first Maisie thought they were joking with her, and scolded them for not seeing that the lady was sad, and needed their help finding something she’d lost. She soon realised that they really did not see her, though. It made her feel weird – not really scared, but upset and bothered. After that she approached the woman only when she snuck out alone, or the other kids were busy playing a game that held all of their attention.

The woman told Maisie her name, and her story. She’d been arguing with her friend (who was a boy), and felt really awful about it. Now she was trying to go to him and apologise, but she couldn’t find his house. She kept coming back to the same park with the bench, no matter what direction she went, and the same carriage almost kept running her over.

Somehow, it clicked in Maisie’s young mind that the lady might be a ghost. That was after she’d been seeing the lady on the bench for over half a year, and she never got dirty or starved to death. In fact, the lady didn’t seem to even realise that time was passing. And Joey still couldn’t see her! For a while he’d pretended to, to make Maisie happy, but Maisie could tell he was faking. He didn’t see the right things. Joey was the one who suggested that they’d take a message to this guy, since the young lady herself couldn’t leave the park. Maisie received the message, which was pretty much just “I’m sorry, I should never have said those things. Please forgive me. I love you!” Joey wrote it down on a piece of paper, and the two young siblings walked the few streets to the address the lady had given Maisie.

They never saw the young lady after that. A few years later, while she was looking through old newspapers for a school project, Maisie discovered what had really happened to the young woman. She’d been killed when a passing carriage had hit a pot-hole in the road. One of the doors had been flung open, and hit her in the back of the head, at just the right/wrong spot to kill her instantly.

12: Is something in particular making their life difficult, like a disability or some kind of lurking danger?

Things were going along all right until her dad died and left her all his holdings–on the condition that she marry someone before her fortieth birthday. She would just say to-heck-with-it, because she’s doing fine with her career, but she’d really like to help out her brother and sister-in-law, who have a tough time of it simply because they are an interracial couple. Not only has her father finally found a way to bend her to his will, no pun intended, but he’s given her an impossible deadline in which to do it! Three years isn’t long enough. Forever isn’t long enough to find someone who compares to William.

13: What sort of social background do they come from? For example, are they part of a specific culture? Is their family wealthy or poor? Did they grow up in a town or city, in the countryside, the suburbs or elsewhere?

Maisie had a privileged childhood. She grew up in a big house with a full staff, and she never wanted for material things. The house is located in a neighborhood of estates owned by the town’s wealthiest and most important families. Nestled between the ubiquitous Iowa fields, the neighborhood is about a four-mile drive from town, where her father ran his business interests, including the newspaper, and where Maisie and her brother went to school.

When her mother was alive, her parents attended and sometimes hosted social functions; Miriam was friendly with the wives of Silas’s business partners, and she did tons of charity work, so there was always a ball or a party coming up. When her parents hosted a social function, Maisie used to sneak out of bed to people watch, admiring the women’s gowns and the handsome tuxedos and enjoying the pretty music. She’d imagine mysteries about this couple or that individual.

Miriam was also a suffragette, so she was often busy with meetings and demonstrations. Maisie was so impressed by that, and it shaped her views on womanhood and the world, and how the two should ideally correlate. Her mother always told her that she could make anything of her life that she wanted, but she would have to be strong, and learn to listen to her heart, and not what other people tell her she should be.

Her father became much more socially reclusive after her mother died, so the wealthy social scene wasn’t as important to her as the other girls in the neighborhood. Her mind was always primarily inquisitive and adventurous, and she knew that she wanted to be a career woman, not a socialite.

Most of her friends lived on farms, or in the nearby neighborhood, which was kind of a suburb before suburbs became a big thing, and the wealthy businessmen of Maisie’s neighborhood funded the construction. (Silas was all over this project, of course!) Their employees populated the middle-class neighborhood, so, in effect, Silas got to be a landlord, too. Therefore Maisie was exposed to all classes and understood various ways of life.

14: How do they get along with their family, whether biological or self-chosen?

It’s easy enough to get along with most of her family. Her mother was a kind, caring, and patient person. She knew how to be strict, though never harsh, and she had a way of making her children want to live up to her expectations, which were always reasonable and attainable.

Maisie and Joey always had a good relationship. They teased and bantered as children, but they both knew where to draw the line; and they stayed in touch through letters after Joey left home. As adults out in the real world, their relationship has matured into a fond and close friendship.

All the grandparents were swell, especially the Murrays, Hamish and Maisie, for whom Maisie was named. Maisie and Joey have privately speculated on how two such lively and fun-loving people could have had a son like Silas. They always had such fantastic stories to tell; some of them would be too fantastic for most people to believe, but somehow Maisie and Joey both believe them.

Their maternal grandparents, Rolf aka Ralph and Myrna Vernice Schimmel nee Postlethwaite, were a little harder to feel close with, but still lovable if you understand Germans and the English. X) They had their own interesting stories to tell–Grandpa Ralph’s parents, aka Maisie and Joey’s great-grandparents, Liesl and Klaus Schimmel, were members of the Underground Railroad, an organization that helped fugitive slaves flee the South from the late 1700s to the end of the Civil War. This left a lasting impression on both Maisie’s and Joey’s minds, and made them sympathetic to the plight of colored people.

Maisie gets along well enough with her various aunts, uncles, and cousins, too. It was her father, Silas, she had the hardest time getting along with. Such was the case for everyone with Silas, though. He was an odd and complicated man, and Maisie rather thought that he simply couldn’t help himself. His mind functioned like a machine built to perform business interactions, and he didn’t seem to know how to fully switch to any other gear. Maisie had once seen him give her mother flowers and a kiss on the cheek, and she can remember a couple of times in which he showed her something very close to fatherly affection, but that was pretty much the extent of his human side. He was tough, shrewd, authoritative, and often ornery and sarcastic, but her mother had taught her to respect her elders, and she couldn’t find it in her heart to hate him, anyway. She had to settle for being angry at and disappointed in him, instead!

15: Which of the other characters are their closest friends?

Her goofy big brother, who at times was kind of annoying while they were growing up; but the older they get, the fonder she becomes of him. It must be Cleo’s influence.

Cleo is another close friend. Maisie never would have expected Joey to show such good taste in women! They didn’t become fast friends, it took a bit of time for Maisie to know Cleo and for Cleo to open up and trust Maisie, but now they’re glad to call each other sister.

Anna. As children, they knew each other from school, but they became friends through the boring social events that their parents hosted/attended. (Anna’s father worked for Silas.) Their first-ever conversation was about spooky stuff; most people didn’t want to discuss that kind of thing, much less take it seriously, so they were both happy to find someone they could swap stories with. They’ve kept in touch since Maisie left Iowa. Anna was the first to tell Maisie that William was living in the old hometown again, and that he’d won the assistant principal clarinetist spot with the orchestra.

And in spite of the breakup, Teddy. He really is a swell guy…even though she has to regularly remind him that they are just friends now.

16: Are any of the other characters their enemies? Why?

Violent Vile-et Violet, probably. She was definitely an enemy the summer that she stole William away. As the years passed, Maisie tried to look back on the events in a more mature way, and see Violet with an objective eye. Certainly Maisie couldn’t blame anyone for wanting William, but Violet was just so mean and smug. She made Maisie feel like a plain, bumpkin fool trying to compete with a worldly goddess. In retrospect, Maisie had almost convinced herself that they were just young and inexperienced, and people can improve as they grow older, but recently Anna told her that Violet is more stuck on herself than ever, and now she has acolytes who enable her. Maisie really isn’t looking forward to returning to her hometown, since Violet has taken that over, too.

Maisie doesn’t think of her father as an enemy, even after he disowned Joey and refused his “half-breed” grandchildren. He’s definitely an antagonistic force, though. Not even death can stop that!

17: What do they look for in a romantic partner? Do they have a special “type” they always go for?

What Maisie needs is someone who understands who she is, and who won’t try to hold her back or control her. She’s attracted to sweet, quiet, elegant men with good manners. Bonus points if they are sensitive, but also have a sense of humor and can laugh at themselves. She had all of that in William, but it turned out he also had a couple of serious flaws: he was fickle, and disloyal. That’s what she figured he must be, when he left her for a mean and self-centered but beautiful and glamorous girl.

For a while she hoped that he would come to his senses and come back to her, but when she heard the news that he and Violet had a child, Maisie’s heart broke once again, and she finally accepted that she would never have him. It took a long time to heal,  but she’s only human and has been lonely, so she has tried to be realistic and open-minded about other men. Maybe she’s just been hanging onto an unfulfilled dream, and she would find out that what she really needs now is another type of man. But no matter whom she dates, her heart always tells her no. Most of them would demand that she quit her job, so she’d just have to go through the trouble of divorce. That man does not understand who she wants to be. This man never stops to appreciate and admire the little things that add beauty or variety or meaning to life, like a pretty sunset, or a silly dandelion growing out of a crack in the pavement, or a piece of music.

She could probably force herself to settle for someone, as long as he was decent, but she knows she doesn’t have to, because she has her career. A lot of women don’t have anything of their own, and so they settle into dismal relationships. Maisie feels lucky that she doesn’t have to do that to herself. She figures being single and lonely is a lot better than being married and miserable.

The closest she has come to finding someone else is Teddy. He’s a good man, really sweet and funny, and just fun to be with. He understands her and fully supports her, and he was always there to put an arm around her when she had a tough day. But he lacks the elegance and sophistication that William always had, even as a little boy; and even worse, he’s a lot like her brother. In fact, the two are best buddies. When she realized that she was practically dating her brother, she also realized that her love for Teddy was much more sisterly, even a little maternal. Still, he may be the only chance she has, and if she hesitates too long, he may get tired of waiting and move on. She just doesn’t know if she can ever go back to thinking of him as her man, and not her brother.

18: Do they follow any religion – organized or otherwise, or believe in powers beyond nature?

Maisie is Christian and attends church regularly, but we’ll keep it vague and generic. And yeah, you could probably say she believes in powers beyond nature. In her mind, it all ties together. She believes God gave her the abilities she has so that she can help His lost children resolve their unfinished business and find their way home.

19: What do they like doing in their free time? Is their taste in culture and entertainment high- or low-brow? Are they part of a special life-style?

LUL I hate answering this question! I guess she’s high-brow, but in a down-to-earth sort of way. She likes classical music. She likes going to museums. She likes needlepoint and crocheting! She feels like a little old lady, but it’s relaxing. She must like to read, because she makes literary references. But she’s not the type who’s afraid of breaking a fingernail or something. Since leaving home, she had to learn how to fend for herself, but she likes cooking and keeping things tidy. She likes going out (dinner, dancing, musical performances) with friends and having a good time. And if she ever lives somewhere besides a boarding house, she thinks she might enjoy tending a small garden or flower patch.

20: If they could do anything they wanted in life, what would it be? Is there one particular dream or nightmare that drives them forward?

Maisie has always wanted to be a star reporter, able to sniff out any story and dig up the most obscure facts, with no one questioning her abilities just because she’s a woman. Winning a Pulitzer might be kinda nifty, too. But now there’s all this business with her father’s will, and she’s no longer sure of her future. If she takes on the role of Silas’s heir, does that mean she can’t be a reporter anymore? What will she become instead? If she walks away from it, or if she can’t find someone to marry before her fortieth birthday, what will become of Joey, Cleo, and their children?