Well (spoiler alert), we did kill Kayleigh off later in the story LOL, but she made it 70 chapters! We killed off one of the other OCs too. We figured we had to kill some of them to keep it realistic; not all of them were going to survive the zombie apocalypse. But her death was very sad and was mourned by the other characters.
Spoil away! I hadn't planned on reading it just because I worry that reading it (more than talking about it) would bring up more of those guilt feelings for me. I'm touched, I always figured it would be more of a "kill off this character early, replace with a new character, wipe our hands of it" sort of thing, haha. I think unless a zombie/apocalypse story was focusing on a bunch of military types, there's no way everyone would survive. So even if you like characters, you've gotta kill some of them. That's the only situation where I would maybe believe it. That's one of the things that bugs me about Zombieland, for instance. Abigail Breslin's character was so young in the first one. She should have for sure died between the movies, no matter how hard everyone tried to protect her or how good she was getting with a firearm.
As for Howie, you gave us the beginning of a great character arc for him. He started off so stiff and serious and businesslike, and over the course of the story, he breaks down and builds himself back up to become better suited for the apocalypse.
I agree with your take on real life Howie. He had never been my favorite to write about because he's kind of boring by comparison, but I've found the way to make him more interesting is to make him more flawed. My favorite Howie character is, of course, Dr. Rough... who is very out of character and yet, his character traits are based on Howie's real life insecurities about being short and being relegated to the role of a back up singer for the first half of BSB's career. The only Howie novel I've written is my slash, Sick as My Secrets, and in that one, he was the catalyst for all the drama. You get more out of him when you go beyond his "Sweet D" persona.
Good for Howie! I'm glad he was able to get through it and become a better person, haha.
I think Howie probably has a lot of flaws, he's just really good at carefully crafting his "persona" and focuses less on allowing the flaws to come out. He's always struck me as someone who can get pretty "green-eyed monster," but also as someone who has a strong grasp on emotional intelligence to deal with those things. I feel like out of all of them, he'd be the most likely to pursue therapy, for instance.
I mean, I think everyone is a little OOC in 00Carter, but less in the "I saw you at Starbucks and must marry you now, you have consumed my life" way and more in the "these traits, good or bad, are taken to their logical extremes for comedy" way.
In going back to PNecklace, I think out of the Boys that aren't Nick (demander of attention that he is), Howie has been my favorite to write. He's got this whole aspect where you're never really sure if he's speaking for himself or the country with his "royal we," but he always seems genuine in what he's doing, then he has this whole mysterious aspect to his powers like Nick, but for completely different reasons. I wrote a Nick & Howie chapter where they have a serious talk that has major story implications, but it was also just nice to see them play off each other when none of the other characters are involved. It's definitely one of my favorites.
