For me, creating characters, villainous or otherwise, is a lot like method acting. What does the character want, and how does (s)he go about achieving it? What is (s)he trying to accomplish in each scene? What secrets is (s)he concealing, and from whom? What is the character doing when not actually "on stage"? Keeping these things in mind helps to inform the dialogue and characterization.

Passed 100K last night on the Big Damn Sequel.

Got about 26K here. Had some interesting characters; damned if I could figure out what to do with them. It'll come, it'll come...

So...how's everyone doing?
I'm running behind on my wordcount; lost a day to Real Life stuff and am trying to catch up as well as work out how to get some action into what is thus far a rather static, single setting story. Got some interesting character stuff, though, and my Angel of Death is shaping up to be a far different character from what I'd originally envisioned...

Congratulations and good luck with it! Way to go!

Hit the 90K mark last night on the first draft of the sequel to my murder mystery. Got about 3/4 of a book now...

One of my favorite alt-history novels is John Ford's The Dragon Waiting, in which the Battle of Bosworth Field goes the other way. It also has wizards and vampires.

A few days ago I wrote the following in my work in progress:
[suspicious]"He has his finger on the pulse of the city, even if he's only waiting for it to expire so he can steal its watch"[/suspicious]
...and can't help thinking this sounds familiar (and too funny) to be an original thought. Anyone recognize this phrase or something very like it from an existing work? I ran it through one of those plagiarism checker tools and it came up OK, but the tool in question appears to be for non-fiction works such as school assignments and may not have fiction in its database. Can anyone help?