What's the point (of view)?

I've sold seven books and six of those are written in first person point of view. For whatever reason, I find it much easier, much more 'me' to write in first.

The only book of mine written in third person is Dark-Adapted Eyes, which will be released by Total-e-Bound next April. I wrote the first (scrappy) draft of it a few years back and put it to one side until I realised I was an erotica author. Then I sexed it up and managed to get a coherent storyline out of it. It's written in third, as I said, with each individual chapter being dedicated to one of the four main characters. I don't head-jump; each chapter is solely the narrative property of Cress, Fern, Gabe or Alex.

In first person point of view it's impossible to head-jump. That's one of the things I like about it.

But my favourite thing about first person is the 'truthiness' of it. Let me explain what I mean by that.

I've had some lovely compliments on my books, especially with regard to character development, but a few readers have said, "I wish I could have found out more about this character or that." Well...guess what? In first person, you can't just leap into someone else's head, examine their thoughts and motivations. It's impossible. (Okay, you can have rotating first person point of view, but up 'til now my first person books have remained in one head and one head only.)

Think about real life. Your thoughts might go a little something like this: "I'm hungry. Wonder if I should cook something proper? Nah, I'll just have a biscuit. Wonder what's on telly tonight? I should give so-and-so a call. I'll do that after I return all those emails."

How many heads are you in? One. But think about your friends and family -- you still know them, right? How? Familiarity. You're accustomed to their actions, patterns of behaviour and so on. You're never in anyone else's head and yet you still feel confident that you know these people, and can predict with some degree of confidence what they would do under certain circumstances.

So why do some readers think you need to jump into someone's head to get to know that character more intimately? I've already said you can't examine someone else's thoughts in first person, but you don't need to, to get to know them intimately. After all, you can't read your friends' thoughts in real life, can you? But you still know them well.

I've mentioned rotating first person but I can't think of a story I've written so far that would benefit from this. Mixing it up in such a way wouldn't add anything to my books -- in fact it would be cheating. I've seen it done well (and not so well) but in my case, there would be nothing to be gained by attempting to add another distinct character voice to the narrative. And that's the tough thing -- making multiple first person distinct enough for the reader not to be confused.

Dark-Adapted Eyes jumps from character to character, but the book's told in the narrator's voice, not those of the characters, so perhaps I can get away with it. I hope so. I very much prefer first person and while I wouldn't say I'll never write in third again, I feel much more settled in first. I actually wrote the first draft of DAE long before I wrote my first published novel, Long Time Coming, and saw no way to be able to adapt it into first when I revised the story.

In the case of my first attempt at writing a novel, I used third. On the rewrites, I moved to first and that was one of the things that helped the story to flow. That and adding a polar buttload of smex, of course! That book eventually became A Little Death and the main character, Mallory, was at the centre of the action. For a time I considered writing one section of the book inside Jonathan (her vampire lover's head) but decided it would be too jarring. I had to stay in Mallory's thoughts to make the book flow, so I had to figure out how to make a few 'problem' scenes work if I saw them through her eyes.

Dark-Adapted Eyes, on the other hand, has too many characters -- four main ones, as I've said -- to make this possible. The characters all know things the other characters don't, information is passed on to different people at different times, I had to show the dynamic between certain pairings within the overall group dynamic, so...third person it was.

Whether you're a reader or a writer (or both), what are your preferences of point of view?