Happy Birthday, Emery Belmont!
To celebrate my main characters’ birthdays, I wanted to give you lovely readers some tidbits and insight into who they are, what makes them tick (the good and the bad), and why they’re made for each other. Matchmaking Beyond the Veil is a 107,000 word slow burn MM paranormal romance and is the first book in the Telltale Ghosts series. It features a matchmaking ghost, an uptight realist, an ex-rival-slash-hot-handyman, and forced proximity.
First up for the birthday bio is Emery Belmont, the main POV character. Emery’s mind is a fascinating place to be and I’ve been so surprised by some of the places he takes me as I write him. I like to build my characters by starting with similar inspirations (for Emery, Draco Malfoy, but more the fanon version with an extra dose of neurosis), giving them specific personality traits and quirky habits, and from there I let them grow as they journey through the plot of the story.
Emery Belmont
Age: 29
Birthplace: London, England
Current Location: Boston, MA
Birthday: June 2
Sign: Gemini
Personality Type: ISTJ
10 Facts About Emery Belmont:
1. Loves a good puzzle
Emery is logical-minded and likes to analyze patterns to problem solve. In his downtime, he enjoys Monument Valley and other puzzle apps for their ingenuity and varying degrees of difficulty that make him think. He also enjoys mystery novels for the puzzle (more so than the story or characters). He likes having answers and he likes to understand how things work.
2. MBA in Finance, Yale University
Despite his wealthy upbringing, Emery finds value in his own path to success. He made a point of going to university to study subjects he was good at, rather than following in his father’s footsteps to work in corporate law. As a calculating ISTJ, Emery has had a successful career in Boston’s corporate finance world.
3. Habit of analyzing those around him
Whether intentionally or not, Emery has a habit to analyze those around him. This extends beyond his friends and family to his colleagues, members of the country club, and pedestrians on the street. His shrewd scrutiny, though subtle, gets him into trouble for judging others when he’s caught out.
4. Dream vacation
Emery’s idea of a dream vacation is somewhere quiet and isolated. He’s been to party locales and doesn’t appreciate tourist crowds. Catch him sunbathing off the coast of the Greek Isles or holing away in a mountain cabin in the Alps.
5. Avoids failure at all costs
Emery hates to lose! Failure is unacceptable to him and he will do everything in his power to work out a viable solution that results with him coming out on top. Luckily for him, he’s an adept smooth-talker and doesn’t have a hard time using his words to charm his way to succeeding.
6. Prefers order overĀ spontaneity
Emery finds love to be fickle, unpredictable, and disorderly in his perfect world of logic and order. He protects himself from love because of this. Love has burned badly him in the past and he doesn’t trust that it won’t again. Rather than take a chance on love, Emery holds his partners at arm’s length to control how much of Emery they are allowed to have.
7. Compartmentalizes emotions
Compartmentalizing emotions and memories is a skill and favorite coping mechanism of Emery’s. If he doesn’t like the way something is going, he’ll swiftly and efficiently box it up and throw away the key so that he doesn’t have to confront things he doesn’t like to deal with. So healthy, right? Someone please convince this guy to go get some much-needed therapy.
8. Idolized his grandfather
Emery spent a lot of time with his grandfather and idolized him for the stories he told and the outings he took Emery on, visiting old country estates in England. After his eccentric grandfather’s passing, Emery stopped believing in imaginative ideals and began to mold himself into what his father wanted him to be.
9. Had imaginary friends
As a young child, Emery pretended to play with a pair of twins in the fields of the estate his mother grew up at. They always beat him at hide and seek. He won’t admit to having imaginary friends now, if he remembers them at all.
10. First kiss at 15
His first kiss was at 15 at a house party in Cape Cod with a classmate named Edmund. Emery’s hands were clammy, but he played it cool when Edmund wanted to hold hands with him and walk on the beach.
Matchmaking Beyond the Veil (Telltale Ghosts #1) | Amazon | Kindle Unlimited | Paperback
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