Time to get Colorful this Throwback Thursday!

If you read my blog on how something as simple as a jacket sleeve can make a big impact on my story characters, then you might not be too surprised by the color obsession that comes next! 🌈

Here’s another blog I did for the Sisters of Suspense group blog.

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I don’t just love color. I adore color. I’m a color junkie. I’m addicted to looking at colors, visualizing them, trying to find the perfect words to describe them.

What’s My Favorite Color? 

That depends… I often say my favorite color is the blue-green of a tropical ocean. I love red and orange in my home, but I don’t like wearing those colors. For clothing, I’m drawn to greens, blues, and purples. My favorite flower is a pink peony. I love a dappled gray horse, but a chestnut (the most common horse color, and therefore may be judged the plainest) holds a special place in my heart because my childhood horse was a chestnut. She was anything but plain to me.

Finding the Perfect Color

Two of my favorite (and most used) sections in my collection of over 50 writing books are:

• Jean Kent & Candace Shelton’s The Romance Writers’ Phrase Book’s four-page “color” section. Those few pages pack a wallop. Forty-two words are listed under the color “brown/beige” and two of my favorites are “toffee” and “foxy.”
• David Grambs’ The Describer’s Dictionary has eighteen pages devoted to “light and colors.” While skimming these pages today for something “brown/beige,” the words “tortoise shell” and “nutmeg” snared my attention.

So many delicious words. So many choices. So many ways to add depth to what we see and feel. I’ve spent hours day-dreaming about how to describe something as simple as my characters’ hair and eye color. But it’s not so simple if I’ve decided these features and colors are what will make a unique impression on my other characters.

Focusing My Color Addiction

There are only so many hours in a day, and if I don’t get something accomplished, my day can become very disappointing and gray. But wait, I love the color gray! But then again for most people, gray is often viewed as dull and boring. A gray sky equals a gray day.

And once again, I’ve become distracted thinking about color. For the love of—! That’s it gray—I’m focusing on you.

For the Love of GRAY

In two of my stories, my heroes have gray eyes. Their eyes are remarkable to my heroines in two very different ways…

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His eyes stampeded her defenses, caused a surge of alarm to dash up her spine. Never before had she seen such eyes. Metal gray, hard as the cold steel of a gun. Thankfully, those eyes weren’t looking at her but instead skewered Dawson.

In Between Heaven & Hell (Lonesome Hearts, book 1), Hannah (a woman raised by Osage Indians and who is now on the run) meets Paden Callahan, an Oregon Trail wagon master who agrees to let her compete with Dawson for the opportunity to win the role of a scout on his wagon train.

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Lifting her head, Adella stared into eyes as silver as newly minted dollars, the only difference in a face as muddy as the rest. The man’s massive frame crouched protectively over her. She was bombarded with memories of her mother’s stories, tales passed down for generations of legendary Celtic warriors.

In Adella’s Enemy,  railroad foreman Cormac McGrady saves Adella Willows from being crushed by an avalanche of iron railroad ties loosened by an unknown saboteur…minutes after Adella arrives in town with a mission of her own—to sabotage Cormac’s railroad as well.

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For the Love of RED

Oh yes, I love gray. But I also mentioned I love red. And in another story, I have two women with red hair…

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Madam Garrett’s squat frame sported a massive bosom and red hair…like Timothy Sullivan’s daughter, but there was a world of differences in the color. While Miss Sullivan’s mane gleamed with gold and strawberry tones, this woman’s hair was harsh and brassy as old copper.

In Between Love & Lies (Gambling Hearts, book 1) Noah Ballantyne meets the owner of the North Star Saloon and thus the owner of Sadie Sullivan, the woman whose farm his herd trampled and destroyed—a woman who, he is starting to realize, was forced into a life of prostitution because of him.

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For the Love of BROWN

For me, brown is a challenging color to describe. But I love a plain (to some) chestnut horse. I also love brown eyes. So for my book 2 in my Gambling Hearts series, I decided my heroine would be a plain-featured woman with brown eyes. But of course, to my hero, Lewis Adams, her eyes are anything but plain…

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The silhouette of a woman, framed by a sunshine halo, bent over him. “You almost had him.” Her smooth-as-honey voice held a hint of amusement. She leaned closer, revealing deep brown eyes rich as polished heartwood.

In Between Home & Heartbreak (Gambling Hearts, book 2), Lewis Adams is bucked off a horse he’s trying to train and found flat on his back in the dust by Eldorado Jane—a traveling show performer who might be Lewis’ long lost friend, Plain Jane Dority, or a charlatan determined to steal the land Lewis bought from Jane’s parents.

Oh, and I couldn’t resist. I added a chestnut mare named Delilah to this story. I knew she’d be a match for Eldorado Jane’s giant jet-black horse with long mane called Samson 🐎

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And now back to the present day.

What’s Your Favorite Color? And why? 

I’d love to hear your comments. The question may be simple, but I have a feeling the answers will be wonderfully complex…and colorfully captivating.

Wishing you lots of colorful reading ❤