Day 13: Secondary Characters with Nancy Crochiere

What are Secondary Characters? How do you develop them? And how do you keep them from taking over your books?

For thirteen years, Nancy Crochiere wrote a humor column about family life for Massachusetts newspapers, then published a collection of those columns titled The Mother Load. She has worked as a development editor for various educational publishers and has written essays for The Boston Globe, Writer’s Digest, and WBUR’s Cognoscenti blog. She began her fiction career by penning creative notes excusing her daughters’ tardiness at school. With her girls now grown, she lives north of Boston with her husband, a lawyer and marathoner, and a few house plants that could use more attention. Graceland, her first novel, was workshopped in Year 8 of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program, and will be published by HarperCollins in May 2023.

Suzanne DeWitt Hall (she/her/hers) is the author of the Where True Love Is devotionals, the Living in Hope series which supports the family and friends of transgender people, The Path of Unlearning faith deconstruction books, and the Rumplepimple children’s books. She is mildly obsessed with vintage cookbooks and the intersection of sexuality and theology. Her debut novel, The Language of Bodies launched recently with Woodhall Press. It’s the story of Maddie Well's mission of vengeance after the murder of her wife: a transgender woman of color. Wally Lamb calls it “…a film noir between covers—dark, tense, and sexy.”