You know, I’ve never written a musician before. I’ve never been into musicians, or even into music all that much. I mean, I love music, I make soundtracks, I use music to inspire me and to get me moving when I need to exercise, but I’m not into music and musicians the way that some women are. I don’t know why, it’s just never been my thing particularly, but the instant I started writing Noah I knew he was the guy with the guitar, and it worked. Who better to help Daisy learn to handle her biggest fear - chaos - than a man who spent his life floating from gig to gig? It was perfect.

The funny thing about Noah is that he’s so much more grounded than Daisy ever was. He may not know where his next paycheck is coming from, but he knows it’s coming, and he accepts that. He doesn’t fight the way things are - he either can take action, in which case he does, or he can’t, so he doesn’t worry about it. He’s practically a damn zen master, and given how hard Daisy’s always trying to control things she can’t control, he’s exactly what she needs. Still, when something needs pushing, Noah will push back - even if it’s Daisy. That wasn’t always the case. When I first started writing D&G, Noah was named Jamie, and he was really sweet and fun, but he didn’t have any real edge to him. At a point during the rewrite, I changed his name to Noah, and he started to stand up for himself, to push back, to fight for what he wanted even if it meant going up against Kammani. It was fun to write Noah pissed off; I enjoyed those scenes a lot.

I cast Alexis Denisof as Noah. For Buffy and Angel fans, that’s Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Some people find that surprising, because in Buffy he was kind of a buffoon and early in Angel he was still a bit of a goof, but once he got rolling, Wesley was hot. I liked him best when he was smart and tough and slightly battle-worn, but before he went full Hershey’s-Special-Dark Wesley. (For those of you here who have not seen Buffy or Angel, I have one word for you: Amazon. Or, maybe Netflix. No, Amazon. It’s worth it. Trust me.) Anyway, my point being, there’s something in Alexis’s portrayal of Wesley that brought him depth even when he wasn’t written with depth, and Noah has that still-waters-run-deep quality, too.

I think my favorite Noah scene to write was the fight in the rain. We had three choreographed rain scenes, starting with Abby as the rain starts, then going to Daisy as the storm intensifies, and then finally to Shar as it hits its peak (in more ways than one, ba-doo-boom-chaaaaa), and in each scene, the relationships all turned a corner. For Daisy, that corner was not a pleasant, sunny corner. Still, it was necessary; Noah loved her and he put up with a lot, but Daisy needed to get over her trust issues (although, with a mother like Peg, you could understand why she’d hesitate). I loved Noah in that scene because even though he loved her and wanted her, he was still grounded enough to know that he needed more from her or it wasn’t going to work. Daisy would have gone on in denial for a long time, but Noah wouldn’t let that happen. I love how he anchored her, even when they were having problems.

Musically, as I mentioned in the soundtrack post, Noah’s style was inspired by Ben Taylor, especially the song Lady Magic. During the open mic night, I wrote Noah’s song to that kind of rough, bluesy beat, and it was loads of fun. I’ve never written lyrics before, nor a performance scene which I think are so hard to get across well, but it was fun to write that scene - especially the ending in the courtyard. (The earlier drafts of that scene are the ones that Jenny and Krissie had such a fuss about. All I have to say is that it was fine as it was, but I conceded to appease them, because I am a reasonable goddess. And because they wouldn’t SHUT UP.)

If we were ever to do a sequel (not that we ARE, just IF, I’m not saying we ARE, we are all very, very, very busy little writer bees, but IF) I know exactly what I would do with Noah. I don’t want to give too much away, because a) who knows if we’ll ever write it and b) I don’t like to commit before the writing starts, but I will say this - there’s an appeal to Hershey’s-Special-Dark-Wesley, and I think it would be interesting to see what it would take to get Noah to that point, and what it would require of Daisy to bring him back. Hmmm… Interesting.