Glad you asked that.
Start with one word.
Obsession.
But that’s not a bad thing. That word needn’t be negative. An online dictionary and thesaurus uses these positive alternative words for obsession:
“Craving, desire, drive, enthusiasm, fascination, hankering, hunger, infatuation, itch, longing, lust, passion, pining, thirst, urge, yearning, yen, idiosyncrasy, quirk, bent, disposition, inclination, leaning, penchant, predilection, predisposition, proclivity, propensity, tendency.”
The words tell of people born with a certain determination, a focus that others don’t have. When we encounter them, we take a second look and say, “What was that?”
The answer, of course, is another colorful character. The online dictionary and thesaurus consulted above describes “colorful character” as “a very unusual person.” Colorful characters may be obsessive, but they don’t have to be. A certain style might be enough, a forcefulness. Colorful characters have a sort of tick about them that makes it impossible to ignore them. Their job description would be “keeping things from getting boring.”
There are eighty folks like that in The Colorful Characters of St. Louis, including me. It’s a weighty book – more than a pound – about a weighty subject. You can meeting some of the characters in the book, buy a copy, and have me sign it. It’ll be at the book’s release party, from 2-5 p.m. Sunday, Oct.2 at the Royale, 3132 S. Kingshighway Blvd. on the South Side. Come and prepare for a colorful day.
Jim Merkel the Writer 