I've been thinking about this subject all week, because to be fairly honest...I don't really have an superstitious characters. Although, to be fair - superstition is often a way of coping with the metaphysical unknown. Whether you knock on wood or throw salt over your shoulder or avoid black cats or walking under ladders or whatever - it's pretty clear that many of our modern quirks had their roots planted a very long time ago.
And even today - we make new ones all the time - after all, how many athletes do you know that never wash their socks during play offs, for example? Hell, as a kid I had a rabbit's foot that I kept on me at all times, so I'm no stranger to believing in the unknown.
Or as writers, maybe we have special things we *must* do before we sit down and write. A lucky pencil or a special candle or listening to a particular song each time we attempt to work. I suspect many of us are a bit OCD with our rituals, but superstition has a slightly nicer ring to it than "batshit crazy."
But as far as my characters go, no, I don't really have any that are superstitious. And really, given the number of crazy situations and creatures my characters come into contact with, it's not much of a surprise. After all, once you've actually met *the* Devil, where do you go from there? At that point, you already know the monsters under the bed have good chance at being real, so covering your mouth when you yawn to keep the demons from flying in may be more of a survival instinct than a some sort of random belief.
However, I think I'm going to try to incorporate some superstitions into this next book I'm working on. It's not an Abby Sinclair book - more of a straight fantasy story. It seems like having a superstitious character would be a fantastic way to introduce a lot of world building concepts - anything from religious stuff to basic culture to showing how people in this particular world cope with things they don't understand - plague or gods or anything really.
Anyone out there have a particular superstition that you always follow/believe in?
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