Guess That Character - The Reveal

Thanks to everyone who dropped by and guessed what my main character Jem looks like, based on the snippet below! Quite a few were correct, actually: Jem's a brunette, very well-groomed and put together. She's quite a control-freak (you'd need to be after five years of keeping your impulses in line!).

Big thank you to Jen for organising the blogfest! It was a ton of fun and I'm really enjoying getting to meet new bloggers and reading everyone's work!

Here's my snippet from yesterday:

Today I'm participating in my first blogfest, organised by the lovely Jen of Unedited. I know blogfest posts can be lengthy and time-consuming to comment on, so if you're not participating please don't feel obliged!

The Guess that Character blogfest is this: I post a snippet of my writing, and you try to guess what the main character looks like.

Here's a bit from the opening of a short story I've written called The Five-Year Itch.

***

Jem Ryan turned her smile on the eager crowd in front of her.

‘And that, ladies and gentleman,’ – she sighed as she spotted the man at the back of the room; there always had to be one who turned up, thinking the women were easy pickings – ‘is how I’ve gone five years without sex.’

The women clapped and looked up at her as if she’d just given them the recipe to calorie-free chocolate.

Jem held up her hands. ‘It’s my five-year anniversary today, actually!’

The applause swelled and Jem nodded graciously, smoothing down her pencil skirt and straightening the cuffs on her fitted shirt. She always made an effort to show that even though she didn’t desire, she could still be desirable. The funny thing was, ever since she’d vowed not to have sex, she’d practically had to beat off fanciable men with a stick.

‘There are CDs and T-shirts at the back, and I’ll be signing books in the foyer for the next hour,’ Jem said when the clapping finally stopped. ‘Pre-dinner drinks start at seven in the hotel bar. And remember: sex-free is sexy!’

She came down off the podium and into the swarming crowd, smiling and shaking the hands of women who gushed how she had helped them find a new direction, a new confidence... ugh. She wrinkled her nose. Some of them needed to find a new deodorant.

Jem settled behind the table in the foyer and picked up her pen.

‘Oh!’ The man she’d seen at the back of the room was smiling down at her. Close up he was even better looking, with thick blonde hair that waved over his forehead and just the right amount of stubble poking through his chin. What the hell was he doing here? If he thought any of her women would succumb to his looks, he had another think coming.

‘Can you sign my book?’ He put a copy of Living Sex Free and Loving It onto the table. Jem stared at his hands, with their long, solid fingers. Just the right amount of knuckle hair, no wedding ring... an image of his hands on her skin flashed through her mind, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. In horror, of course.

‘Are you alright?’ the man was asking.

Jem cleared her throat and looked up again. ‘Who should I make it out it to?’

'Trevor.’

Jem relaxed her grip on the pen and let out her breath. Trevor. Any man called Trevor was sure to be the type who stopped in the middle of sex to have a dump, or something equally hideous. She scrawled her name across the book, omitting the kisses she usually put.

***

So... what does Jem look like?

(And apologies to any man called Trevor; I just needed a name and that was it!)