Characters

When writing a story, you need at least one character.  Duh.  Depending on what setting your story is in, your main character will vary.  Another duh.  Unless, of course, you're doing some kind of genre-crossing story where a modern P.I. from Chicago will interact with an elven hunter from the Enchanted Forest of Brinae, and fight the cyber commandos of planet Mechanizoid.  Or something.
It's a bit over the top, but if you're in a real pinch for a character, you might consider perusing the hysterical gaming parody "Munchkin's Guide to Power Gaming".  It takes the stereotypical character archetypes from across several gaming genres and embellishes them to create super powerful characters that can put a bullet through a dime from 3 miles away.  Or go boxing and take down an aircraft carrier.  Very funny and loaded with British humor, this book is most likely on just about every single hardcore role-player's bookshelf.
This book covers it all: Fantasy, Modern (action, aliens, spies, martial arts), Sci-fi (space, giant robots), Horror (zombies/mutants/animals, goth, Outer Beings from Beyond), Live Action, and Super Heroes.  If you're hard up for a character, this book will give you tons of ideas either for the laugh factor or developing a real character.
I, myself, have based a sword character in the story I'm working on from a couple of ideas I found in this book.
Also, another plus, is that in the section for DEALING with these over-the-top characters, there's plenty of ideas on how to mess with them.  Fake maps, traps, net-hackers, survival loonies...anything to put a wrench into the workings of powerful characters.

Beginnings...

After much hemming and hawing, I've decided to start this blog in the memory of a good friend, Lori.  She's the one that got me into writing again for the first time since High School, many many moons ago.  I'm not too sure what the final consistent format will be, so bear with me for the first few posts.
It started off as a group of women gathering at a Borders Books store in Columbus, Ohio (where I was working in the cafe) writing mystery stories.  After several weeks, I asked them if they had killed anyone yet.  They started asking my "male opinion" on certain situations.  After a few weeks of loose discussions with them between my customers, they asked if I wanted to join their group.  I happily accepted, and started working on a fantasy story that since given me so many ideas that I'm looking at a trilogy of novels at least.  Lori was an excellent sounding board for my ideas, and inspired many more by being a patient teacher.  The group will dearly miss her, but she will live on in our hearts.  And our stories, as I'm already fleshing out a character based loosely on her.