Cars as Characters
by Jordan Castillo Price
If you love your car, does your car love you back? Sometimes it seems like it. On a subzero day when you’re begging the engine to turn over and it chugs to life, it feels like your car gave it that little extra try, just for you. Or if it didn’t, then it’s lazy and selfish, as usual.
I had a love/hate relationship with my first car. Being sixteen, I wanted something cool, but what I got was an eight-year-old Chevy Nova with holes in the floor and doors falling off. Since I was a punk rock chick, I was particularly appalled by the color: powder blue. So I did what any other punk chick would do: I spray-painted it black, and I named it Deathmobile. I then placed rubber skeletons on the dash. They melted in the sun and permanently adhered.
While to my knowledge no photographic evidence of Deathmobile exists, I can assure you. It wasn’t pretty.
In fiction, cars not only speak volumes about their owners, they become characters themselves if they’re written with enough attention and intention. In Meatworks, the only thing Desmond Poole cares about anymore is his car. And it’s not even on the road.
From Meatworks –
Mrs. Zelko was off playing pinochle, or whatever she did on Saturdays, but the $25 per month I tithed to her bought me a key to her dusty garage. I turned that key left-handed. And there she was, the primer-gray Gremlin I’d had since I was seventeen years old—the car that, by all accounts, should no longer run. I ran my hand over her peeling hood. If I re-connected the fuel line, I bet she’d chug right back to life.
Gremlin
I got a lot of mileage from that car. I was pretty damn ruthless in writing Desmond, but when he was with his car, my heart softened for him. His did too. He was a bastard 90% of the time, but when he was around the Gray Lady, he was positively tender. Cars represent so many things: personality, status, and especially freedom. For Desmond, the Gremlin was a representation of all that was just out of reach, so close, yet so far. Getting his car on the road goes from being a pipe dream to an attainable goal—a goal at which he could easily fail. It was the one relationship he stood some chance at getting right. And in a way it seemed like the key that could unlock the beginning of an upward spiral. If he could just figure out how to get his car back, maybe he could figure out what the heck he was going to do with his life.
What about you, does your current car have a name? Post it here (or your favorite car name from the past) and we’ll randomly pick a winner to receive a free copy of Meatworks.
About Meatworks
Desmond Poole is damaged in more ways than one. If he was an underachiever before, he’s entirely useless now that he’s lost his right hand. He spends his time drowning his sorrows in vodka while he deliberately blows off the training that would help him master his new prosthetic. Social Services seems determined to try and stop him from wallowing in his own filth, so he’s forced to attend an amputee support group. He expects nothing more than stale cookies, tepid decaf and a bunch of self-pitying sob stories, so he’s blindsided when a fellow amputee catches his eye.
Corey Steiner is a hot young rudeboy who works his robotic limb like an extension of his own body, and he’s smitten by Desmond’s crusty punk rock charm from the get-go. Unfortunately, Desmond hasn’t quite severed ties with his ex-boyfriend, and Corey isn’t known for his maturity or patience.
Meatworks is set in a bleak near-future where cell phone and personal computer technologies never developed. In their place, robotics flourished. Now robots run everything from cars to coffee pots. Taking the guesswork out of menial tasks was intended to create leisure time, but instead robots have made society dependent and passive.
Desmond loathes robots and goes out of his way to avoid them. But can he survive without the robotic arm strapped to the end of his stump?
Available at: JCP Books, LLC, Amazon and Barnes & Noble
Don’t forget to check out JustJen’s review of Meatworks to see what she thought of it!
About Jordan Castillo Price
Author and artist Jordan Castillo Price writes paranormal thrillers colored by her time in the midwest, from inner city Chicago, to small town Wisconsin, to liberal Madison. Her influences include Ouija boards, Return of the Living Dead, “light as a feather, stiff as a board,” and boys in eyeliner.
Jordan is best known as the author of the PsyCop series, an unfolding tale of paranormal mystery and suspense starring Victor Bayne, a gay medium who’s plagued by ghostly visitations. Also check out her new series, Mnevermind, where memories are made…one client at a time.
You can reach Jordan on her Facebook Fan Page, PsyCop Fan Page, Goodreads Fan Club, LiveJournal Blog, Twitter or sign up for her Newsletter.
The Blogger Girls 
My car’s name is Daphne. She is 18 years old now. She has arthritis and is rusty with holes in her doors from the corrosion of the salt air where I live. But even when we can ever afford to get a new car I cannot see myself just dumping her off somewhere. My husband has a friend who is a mechanic perhaps I’ll make her an organ donor so she can live on.
I never named my cars.
Cool post!
I’ve tried to name my current car since I got her, but nothing will stick. After over a decade I’m afraid to try out new names because if something does manage to stick, she’ll probably stop running. Only my two-wheeled vehicles have allowed me to name them. 🙂
When I was sixteen my Grandmother loaned me one of her cars until I was able to buy my own. It was a 73 Cadillac she had owned for over five years. That car was huge! It became known as the Bad Cad. My friends loved it. We could pile so many people inside. Lots of fun times and great memories. 🙂
A name won’t seem to stick to my current car, either. I’m trying to call it Sparky, but I’m just not feeling it.
I call my new car Amy because the navigation system sounds just like the character Amy Farrah Fowler from The Big Bang Theory! I love the voice & show! JCP rocks. Thanks for the giveaway!
We have had a few family cars with some pretty good names lol. “The Pimp Mobile” a big old Buick. “The Jesus Wagon” a station wagon that came with a Jesus fish sticker on the back. “The Loser Cruiser” a really tiny two seater truck.
I never named my car… Now I wonder if I should *thinking*.
I have a 1999 Ford Escort I call Dinah. She looks bad (needs new paint, headliner, carpet)but she feels like part of me. I don’t really want to get used to a new car, and I REALLY don’t look forward to the ordeal of buying a new one, so I’ll keep Dinah for as long as she’ll have me. 🙂
I have never named my cars. My current car just seems too boring to deserve a name. In college my best friend named her car Ms Yvonne. Ms Yvonne could fit a bunch of exuberant college girls and boy did we get up to allot of mischief riding to frat houses in her.
I haven’t named my current car. My first car I tended to call baby. It was really old and it felt like I needed to be Han Solo asking the Millennium Falcon to stay together.
It’s funny we’ve had lots of cars in the family but we have never named them not sure why.
ShirleyAnn(at)speakman40(dot)freeserve(dot)co(dot)uk
My current car doesn’t have a name but my favorite was my step-dad’s car from when he first married my mom. He called her Christine after the Stephen King novel.
I’ve never named my cars but my current car is definitely a “he”. I actually had a daddy long legs that lived in the car for some time and he was named George….I was pretty devastated when he disappeared
my first car was an austain metro and i neamed her anna mae metro of tina turner
Mmmm, may be Sebas 🙂
I’ve never named my cars, but I did have a favorite car that I still remember fondly to this day.
My 2013 Prius C is called Bugsy. I love it to pieces and it loves me. You know who I am.
Ha, I sure do! xoxo