Character spotlight on Flannery McNeill & Jamie O'Connor

Kaye Dacus introduces Flannery and Jamie from her final story in her Matchmakers series, Turnabout's Fair Play.

Over to you, Kaye:~

Brief physical description

Flannery McNeill has the looks and figure most women would envy—tall, blonde, and athletic. Although not a classic beauty, she has a cute sweetness that helps her make easy friends and attract all kinds of men. Of course, she’s not sure she likes that!

When Jamie O’Connor enters a room, he turns the head of every woman in the room. Though he’s a few inches under average height, his dark hair, gray eyes, and slow, sensual smile make him the subject of many women’s daydreams.

Actor/famous person

Like the other three female leads in The Matchmakers Series, the template that inspired Flannery’s physical description is a model I found on JupiterImages.com—which also happens to be the model the publisher used on the front cover!

Though I wrote a synopsis (a short one) for the series proposal more than a year before I started writing the book, I didn’t have a clear picture of Jamie in my head when it came time to actually start writing. Until I realized I had a TV obsession who would work perfectly—Alex O’Loughlin!

Strengths and weaknesses

Flannery is a confident, independent woman—a little too confident and independent for her own good, sometimes. She also has hangups about good-looking men, and a fear that her best friends’ marriages are going to ruin her friendships with them. But She also can admit when she’s wrong, and she goes out of her way to help others.

Jamie is popular and successful, well-known and a leader in his industry. At least, that’s how he appears to the outside world. Inside, he’s still the dorky thirteen-year-old who stutters and can’t talk to women. And when the façade of the successful businessman is stripped away . . . well, I can’t say too much, because then there’d be no reason to read the book!

Quirk (if any)

Flannery DOES NOT cook. In fact, though she has a high-end kitchen in her three-year-old downtown condo, she’s never even used her oven. She’s also very proud of her Irish heritage—but whatever, you do, don’t mention her namesake, author Flannery O’Connor! She absolutely hates that.

When Jamie is upset, if he’s sitting at a table, he presses his face down against it. This got him in trouble in junior high school when he did this in the school cafeteria and his forehead stuck to a sticky patch on the table. He’s also an avid fan-fiction reader.

Your inspiration for the characters

I sent in the proposal for The Matchmakers Series in June 2009. The series was built with two strong story ideas I’d already been working on for a while (Love Remains and The Art of Romance). But I needed a third story idea. I knew the heroine would be the third of the best friends. Because I was an editor who’d been laid off from my job less than a year before, I decided Flannery would be an editor. Since I worked in advertising/marketing for 13+ years before entering the publishing industry, I decided to make Jamie a Sports Marketing account executive at a large advertising agency.

Background to the story

Aside from being a romance, Turnabout’s Fair Play is a story about identity—finding or rediscovering who someone was created by God to be. And because one can only do that through loss and crisis, there’s plenty of both in the story. But there’s also plenty of humor and plenty of romance!

My image set on Flickr for this book: click here

Thanks for visiting again, Kaye :)

Relz Reviewz Extras
Character spotlight on Zarah & Bobby from Love Remains
Character spotlight on Caylor & Dylan from The Art of Romance
Review of Stand-In Groom
Visit Kaye's website
Buy Kaye's books at Amazon or Koorong