Choosing a career is one of the largest and most important decisions people ever make (and I’ve made the decision more than once). When it comes to characters, choosing the right one is just as imperative. One of the first decisions I make for my characters is their job. Often it even comes before their name or physical description, which might seem a little backward, but for me, what a character does tells me a lot about who he is.

A character who chose to work as an insurance adjuster is probably going to be a very different kind of person than the guy who is trying out for the SWAT team, and their experiences growing up will often influence the people they become as adults. So the social worker might be in that line of work because he was a foster kid, or the librarian because his grandmother read to him every night.

When I chose careers for the Zero Hour series, Adam’s job came first. I have always wanted to write a series about paramedics, partly because I know quite a bit about the job, partly because the war stories are just so interesting, and partly because… well, let’s face it… paramedics are sexy. Dex was a bit harder to pin down. In the original draft, he was a history teacher, then a science teacher, then a doctor. I finally landed on forensic pathologist because I knew it would work well with the plot, and as an added bonus, I found the research incredibly fascinating.

I did more research for Dex’s job than any other profession I’ve chosen before. I came across some intensely graphic (and very thorough) websites. Some of the information was difficult to see, even in still images, and I tried to use my own reactions to help colour Dex’s.

Now, I’m working on a new novel where one MC is a heavy metal fabricator (which I know a little bit about from my days as a receptionist at a construction company) and the other MC is an urban planner (which I know virtually nothing about). It’s taking me a bit of time to research and figure out exactly what it is these guys would do in a day, but the extra time spent is worth it.

While I sincerely hope people never tire of reading about cops and cowboys, sometimes it’s fun to mix things up with something a little different.

What’s the most interesting or unusual profession you’ve read about in a novel?