Wednesday 18 January 2012

Hallowed Blog Tour - Where we get to drool over Tucker.

I am extremely excited to be the third stop on the Hallowed blog tour. If you have missed the previous two posts then please check them out using the blog tour guide in the right hand column. I was drooling at the bit, when I realised my guest post was all about Tucker! Who doesn't love Tucker? He definitely keeps me coming back for more. 
So I will pass you over to Cynthia who will tell you about Tucker. 


This may come as a bit of a surprise, but when I was writing Unearthly, I had no idea that readers would respond to Tucker with so much enthusiasm. I thought there would be a fairly even split between people who fancied Tucker and people who fancied Christian. They were pretty balanced, in my own mind, after all. But I was, er, wrong. If there was a metaphorical fist fight between Tucker and Christian in Unearthly, Tucker definitely won. Hands down.

This makes me happy, actually. Being Team Tucker means that you appreciate a real guy and not just a dream/perfect boy. I always laughed at reviews of Unearthly that pointed out that Christian is not a well-defined character in the book. That was my intention. I didn’t want us to get to know Christian very well in Unearthly. I didn’t want there to be a real triangle, a real decision that Clara had to make about who she loved. (There would be a decision about who she saved, but that’s a different matter. . .)

I wanted us to get to know Tucker. And I wanted Tucker to be a real, authentic, flawed-but-also-good-at-heart, red-blooded seventeen-year-old boy from Wyoming. He was very much a character who came to life for me once I had decided on Wyoming as the setting, and there was a dab of Gilbert Blythe in him, I discovered to my utter delight, and a dab of that old-school chivalrous cowboy who takes his hat off to talk to a lady. I found him wonderfully warm and funny and sweet. I think I fell in love with him as much as Clara did!

Tucker is good for Clara because he likes her for who she is. He makes her feel normal, in a world where she is sick of feeling special all the time. She can relax with him. And she can laugh
with him; they never take each other too seriously. There’s no pressure, with Tucker. No expectations. Clara needs that. She needs someone to love her as a human being, and not as an angelic being.

That said, Tucker is not perfect for Clara. (Okay now, hear me out. . .) I firmly believe that good stories come from FLAWED CHARACTERS. If you want to daydream about perfect people, go play with Barbies or Sims or something. My characters are messed up. Clara is deeply, wonderfully, flawed on all kinds of levels. And so is Tucker. . .(Okay now, hear me out.) Tucker is a tad hot-headed, first of all (which is why so many sparks fly between he and Clara in the beginning). He’s honest to a fault. He can, in Clara’s words, be a rude hick. He’s also stubborn as a mule. Just try getting him to do something he has firmly decided he doesn’t want to do. I’ve tried it—it doesn’t happen! But probably the biggest problem with Tucker, relationship-wise, is that he is not totally comfortable with Clara being an angel-blood. He wants to be; he tries to get his head around it, act like it’s no big deal, be supportive, but her angelic nature ultimately scares him. He’s no coward, so he faces his fear. But he still feels it, and it makes him question whether or not he can fully be a part of her world.

(Ducks for flying vegetables being thrown at my head.)

Did I mention that I fell in love with Tucker as much as Clara did?

You weren't the only one to fall in love with him Cynthia! 


Thank you Cynthia for a fabulous post. For the next stop on the tour tomorrow, you need to pop over to my good friend Emma's blog -Bookangel Booktopia. 


To find out more about Cynthia:


Twitter: @CynthiaHand
Website: http://www.cynthiahand.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cynthia-Hand-Author-of-Unearthly/146043542087551?sk=wall

5 comments:

  1. I utterly adore Tucker. He's like, my perfect guy!! I love that he's flawed, and that he struggles to deal with what Clara is. Heck, she does too to a certain extent at times. I do love them together, so, so much. Hallowed was incredable but it did break my heart more than a little for many, many reasons. I am dying to find out what happens next!!

    Thanks for sharing more about one of my favourite characters ever, Cynthia!!

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  2. I love this post. And Tucker too of course!

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  3. I do love Tucker but can see why Christian may be better for Clara and ultimately Tucker in the long run :D

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  4. Thanks for this lovely post, Cynthia! And thank you Vivienne for sharing it with us :)

    I LOVE Tucker, so if he decides that an angel-blood is too perfect I have no superpowers *Bat eyelashes at Tucker*

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  5. What a wonderful post! I really fell for Tucker in Unearthly, but I could really see how in Hallowed that Tucker and Clara might not be longterm. Sad, but believable!

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