2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?
How many characters do I have? Oh man, I have no idea. Give me a few minutes to count them all up…
Sixty-three major characters. This doesn’t include short stories or The Good Man (which can hardly be called a short story), or any characters that have brief cameos. Heck, that doesn’t even include Fennec, who is practically a main character in Fie Eoin although he’s dead – or the Manticore from Phooka Tales (who shows face almost as much as Phooka himself). It also doesn’t include fandom characters (Lane’s Girl doesn’t count as fandom, because I’ve changed the world so much and made all of my own characters).
Wow. That’s a lot of voices running around in my head.
As to male vs. female, I’m pretty much even. I have two books where the main character is male (Apollo and Lane), three where the main character is female (Kindra/Kaye, Meara, and Holly), and two where the book is split between two main characters (Karigan/Sipi and Neona/Sean from the Top Secret Project). I probably have more female characters total (Apollo, especially, is surrounded by women), but I don’t necessarily like writing one sex over the other.