Charlotte: Strong-Willed and Focused

Charlotte is strong-willed, focused and highly intelligent. She plays several instruments and is always hearing music in her head.

Character Summary

Jonathan: Hello everybody. It is the most momentous day of my life because of all the things I’ve ever done, I’ve been building up to this minute ’cause we have six characters in this book and we’ve only found out about five of them. And I am as hyper as this cup of coffee can make me right now, because this is it, this is the ultimate character reveal. And we’re super excited because we know even though you’re not supposed to have favorites in this world, that a certain person in this room who is female, not mentioning names, but hey Kim, might just have a favorite in the book Gifted. So drum roll, the sixth and final main character reveal is none other than the lady herself who needs no introduction, Charlotte.

Kim: Charlotte.

Jonathan: Charlotte.

Kim: I love Charlotte.

Jonathan: Do you really Kim? We never knew that.

Kim: I love Charlotte. Charlotte was really fun to write. There was a lot we could do with Charlotte and she was incredibly fun to write. And there is a big, huge part of me that is in Charlotte. And I think I’ve mentioned before that there’s a piece of me in all of our characters, but I identify the most and absolutely love Charlotte.

Jonathan: I don’t know if we would get this familiarity, but let me just give you some bullet points of Charlotte. Strong-willed, focused, disciplined, rebellious. I can’t see any of that in you Kim, at all.

Kim: Well, you’re not looking very hard then.

Jonathan: Oh, but she’s also musical. She sees music and everything and yes. So as everybody knows, we’ve been talking about these characters and these characters arrive at a special location to be revealed in the book and in the middle of the special location is a room that they are showed into and in this room, just to build up the suspense, were six gifts, all beautifully wrapped with tags. One of the tags says “Breakthroughs are made by violating logic.”

Jonathan: Now Paul, I’m a Mr. Spock fan, I know all about logic. I don’t know how you could violate logic and get a breakthrough, so tell me a little bit about this gift that Charlotte’s going to be practicing.

Paul: Sure. Well, the gift that Charlotte receives with her card…

Jonathan: Yes.

Paul: Let’s talking about violating logic, she receives a set of keys, and they are old-fashioned skeleton type keys. There’s multiple keys and they’re all attached to a cord. And of course, she’s strong minded and speaks her mind and you know, wants to know what in the world she’s supposed to do with these keys. And this message, Charlotte was just as confused as you by the message of violating logic to get breakthroughs. But that’s actually something fun to discuss. You know, so many of us are logical people and we make decisions based on a logical path and we do our research, we get all of our ducks in a row and everything lined out and then we make our decision. So if that’s the logical thing to do, how would you violate logic?

Jonathan: Well, if you’re asking me, I’d just probably just shoot from the hip and do what logic says couldn’t be done, I guess. Right?

Paul: That’s it.

Jonathan: I had the joy of meeting Bob Proctor recently, Kim invited me to an event in Los Angeles where I got to meet Kim in person, which was just wonderful. And Bob Proctor has this, what he calls a little stick man and he has the head and then draws this line across the top. And it’s almost like, this is what the world lets you be like in this day and age, but realistically, underneath is what life was like when you were a kid. And I know he talks about six different things and one of them was having the gift of will or willpower, I guess.

Jonathan: Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. I’m being attended to, how lovely. I’m in a hotel.

Jonathan: So yeah, what’s with this? When we’re kids, you know, we can do stuff and when we’re adults, we’re just like, “Can’t be done.”

Kim: Well there’s a difference between will and willpower. So will is your ability to focus on some thing, whatever it is that you choose to focus on, to the exclusion of all else. Be so laser focused on what it is you want to do, accomplish, achieve. Willpower is, you know, gathering inside yourself and doing the best you can to hold onto something you don’t really want to do. So willpower and the gift of will are completely different.

Jonathan: So interesting because when I read, ’cause I get the inside Coles notes on these characters, somebody who is strong-minded and strong-willed, I’m so excited for people to see what she does with these keys because I bet you it’s like, “No, I’m not doing that. That can’t be done.” And yeah, just you wait, girl.

Kim: Yeah.

Paul: Exactly.

Jonathan: Well, that’s fascinating.

Paul: And what makes it even better is when you say, “Well, that can’t be done,” but you think, “Okay, well maybe if you go this route and do it like this, it can be done.” But then you throw all that aside and just like you said, shoot from the hip or go off of your intuition or your gut feeling.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Paul: It makes a big difference.

Jonathan: Wow. Wow. The funny thing is with all of these characters, to know them, they genuinely feel to me like real people. and I know one of the ladies, in fact, it’s fair to say your mom, Paul, who’s a teacher, she just said, “I’ve had all these people in my class. I know who Peter is, I know Katie!” And now I am absolutely sure that people are gonna know Charlotte. I have to say it that way because it just sounds so English when you say “Charlotte.” How does one say “Charlotte” in American?

Paul: Charlotte.

Kim: Charlotte.

Jonathan: Anyway, I have a cousin called Charlotte, so it’s a beautiful name. So Kim, I know that when you’ve done your research, you’ve looked at certain personality traits and some of this redhead fiery Kim has probably come out in this character. Is there some other personality traits about Charlotte you could share with us?

Kim: Well, Charlotte is very both brained, if that makes sense. She is not right-brained or left-brained. She’s highly intelligent and she’s really smart. She does well in school. It’s kind of effortless for her but she’s also very musically gifted. She plays a couple of instruments and she is always hearing music in her head. So everything to her is a piece of music. So she kind of works in both sides of her brain which makes her a little unique.

Jonathan: Mm-hmm. And obviously being a teenage girl in the United States, are there boys in her life? Is she interested, not interested, constantly being chased, being the chaser? I mean, what’s the deal? Are you allowed to tell me? Do I have to wait to read the book?

Paul: A girl like Charlotte thinks that the boys just aren’t good enough for her, you know? Charlotte’s always right. No one’s going to tell Charlotte what to do. Charlotte does not need a guy to make her happy or tell her what to do. We’ll tell you that right there. Yeah.

Jonathan: I got it already. I got it already.

Kim: Yeah.

Jonathan: So would it be fair to say that… Well, if I can use this word, if it’s still PC, would you say that Charlotte was a little bit of a snob?

Kim: You know, I don’t think of Charlotte as a snob.

Paul: Nope.

Kim: No, but I do think of her as wanting her own way and she gets a little annoyed when people around her don’t see the value in doing it her way. And she will acquiesce if she has to, but she would be much happier if people would just do things her way. She’s a little controlling.

Paul: Jonathan, I-

Jonathan: I do not know anybody like that, Kim.

Paul: Jonathan, I think that on the surface that people will think that Charlotte is a snob, but she’s misunderstood.

Jonathan: That’s right.

Paul: There’s an underlying reason for why she’s acting the way she is and a lot of times that comes off appearing as a snob.

Jonathan: Interesting. I mean I have three girls, a little bit older than Charlotte and I took them shopping on the weekend and Macy’s had a Black Friday in July sale. I mean, I don’t know, there’s any reason for any sales these days. But there was so many beautiful girls but my girls are like trained, where’s the corner where the 70 to 80% racks and they went straight to it. And then I’m looking at, you know, all the beautiful brands that Macy’s had and a lot of people buying stuff full price. I mean, I don’t know, it’s whatever you’re trained to do and I have a feeling that Charlotte is one of those ladies that feels, I could be wrong, maybe it feels better for buying things full pricing than hunting the sale rail down?

Kim: That would be Katie.

Jonathan: Oh that would be Katie.

Kim: Katie wouldn’t care, if it was the right outfit, if it was what she wanted, she wouldn’t care what she paid for it.

Jonathan: All right. I’m not marrying Katie then. Oh wow. So wow, let’s just recap about this. So we’re three gentlemen and three ladies, Sydney, James and Peter, Katie, Emily, and now Charlotte. All six revealed, feels like something between Big Bang Theory and Friends so you know were sort of… Yeah, and no there’s four in Big Bang. No, no I guess there’s seven isn’t there? Four men, three girls, but Friends was three and three. Is there any chance of any romantic escapades between any of these characters that you could reveal or like, “We ain’t telling you?”

Paul: Well, let’s put it this way. There’s six teenagers. So there are hormones and they are raging.

Jonathan: I love that. I love that. Wow. Wow. So I actually even have, I can’t share this, but I have real photographs of who in your mind who people look like. And then I have silhouettes of the characters and we share a silhouette of the character. You know, once we’ve done the reveals and on the website and then we share the gift but I just love how you two have really, I mean, if we had a way of cyborging sort of characters into life, you know, I think all six characters, you know, would literally be real.

Paul: Yeah.

Kim: Well, they are very real to us. And probably for me anyway, some of the funnest times of putting this story together were in developing the characters because we could make them anything we wanted them to be. And that process was a lot of fun. And then when we started writing, we had to have a visual of who they were. So I went on the Internet and went searching and I’d say, “Oh, this one is James, this one’s Peter. Here’s Charlotte, here’s Katie.” And as we were writing, we would look at those pictures so it’s, it’s a stranger’s face with characteristics of the person that we developed and they’re very real people to us.

Jonathan: Do you remember the, what was that, the Twilight series? And it was like team Edward and teen Jacob and all these wristbands that were going on between them the vampires and the werewolves. I mean not saying it’s that dark a book or anything, but I can totally see people fandoming, you know, Katie or Peter or Sydney. And one day at Comic-Con there’s going to be all of these, you know, anime type characters all wearing who their favorite characters in the Gifted series. It’s so exciting.

Kim: Absolutely.

Jonathan: So that is number six. There are others, lesser roles in the first book but there are definitely a lot of other characters in this book that will be revealed in the Gifted Insiders group. So if you haven’t joined the Facebook group yet, there is stuff coming that you will not find anywhere else. But in the meantime, you must go to ReadGifted.com. Find us on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, wherever you choose. But the real juicy stuff is coming out now that these characters are revealed in the Insiders group.

Jonathan: So we’re excited to be having tea or coffee with Paul and Kim or whatever kind of average it may be and find out some more juicy stuff as we go down the route of the book reveal coming out later this year. So one last juicy little reflection on Charlotte, you two. Hey, I’m representing the world here, they need to know.

Kim: Inquiring minds want to know, Paul…

Jonathan: I’m defying logic by asking questions I’m not supposed to.

Paul: You’re defying logic. Well Charlotte is very focused and very determined and when she wants something she figures out a way to make it happen.

Jonathan: Right on.

Kim: Got to love Charlotte. Just got to love Charlotte.

Jonathan: That’s all we need to know.

Kim: Yup.

Jonathan: So read Gifted, coming out, who knows, very very soon. We can’t tell you a date, yet because it’s still with the publishing Gods of the world but pretty soon. I can see the cover, I can see the book, I’ve had the privilege of reading it cover to cover several times.

Kim: Yay!

Jonathan: Hey Paul, Kim, thank you for devoting a little bit more of the inner workings of the plot and we will carry on at a later date. So Charlotte is out.

Kim: Yay!

Jonathan: Hey, bye for now.

Paul: Bye.

Kim: Bye.