Seeking Writer's App for iPod Touch

Recently I acquired an iPod Touch. I've had a portable dedicated MP3/music player for several years now (an indispensible item when one works in Cubicle Country) and initially couldn't see how the Touch differed from something like that, but after playing a bit with one back in May, I found myself tremendously intrigued.

To make a long story short, I have one now (a second-generation 8 GB model) and I love it. Love love love. I find iTunes to be somewhat obnoxious and I am definitely not one of those who valorizes Apple or thinks they can do no wrong (I've never even owned an Apple desktop or laptop computer; just iPods), but the Touch is definitely a big win for me.

Anyway, though, I've downloaded a number of applications at this point, from the practical to the musically adorable to the inane but strangely compelling.

But there's one thing in particular that I think would be perfect for this platform that I've not as of yet been able to find. I don't know whether it exists and I am just not finding it, or whether maybe nobody has developed anything like it yet -- in any case I figured I might as well send this query out into the Web-aether and see what came back.

What I am looking for is a sort of "writer's assistant" program geared toward people attempting to write fiction (as I have been for...well, a long time). Its main focus would be character development, and given that I carry the iTouch pretty much everywhere with me these days, it would be wonderful to be able to use it in the manner I have in mind.

Now, of course I know that there are many ways in which a person might utilize regular computers, simple notepad applications, or even a plain old paper-and-pen setup to hash out their writing ideas. Moreover, there may well be something like this for some other hand-held computing device (I haven't looked). So it's not like this kind of thing would be a "necessity" app -- it would be more like a convenience, and hopefully for people like me, something that might encourage and enable us to work on character development for our stories on the bus, in waiting rooms, etc.

Somewhat amusingly (or perhaps frighteningly?), the closest thing I've been able to find in the App Store to what I'm looking for is something called Little Black Book, which is, as near as I can tell, a kind of interactive journal geared toward the kind of men who might actually take the Seduce and Destroy infomercial from the film 'Magnolia' seriously. You use it to track and store information on your "romantic conquests", I guess, and (because of course you probably don't want your mom finding this stuff) its data isn't connected to the iPhone's inbuilt contact list.

And...I actually might have been willing to try that app for this character-development thing I have in mind, if not for the fact that the "instant phone-number dial" stuff was so prominent and that it didn't look like it had a flexible enough interface to actually put in all the info I'd want for a character. Obviously my fictional characters aren't going to have phone numbers so it would be an annoying distraction to have the phone number field sitting there all the time, but not other fields that actually might be useful.

So in summary, the Writer's App I Am Seeking would have the following features:

1. Ideally it would permit the user to create entries for each of the characters in a given story which might include a picture (either from an included avatar-maker or from a photo or drawing you import) of how they imagine the character to look.

2. Fields for the character's name and various "stats", such as age, interests, personality traits, etc.

3. A built-in "notepad" page associated with each character where you could practice writing things in the character's "voice" (something I have a terrible time with -- right now every character I attempt to make seems to sound exactly like me, which isn't really a good premise for an interesting story...).

4. An indexing system that consists of a page where different stories you might be working on are listed, and then sub-sections within each story where you can add multiple characters (possibly sorted according to categories like "protagonist", "villain", "supporting character", "sidekick", etc.).

5. Like the "Little Black Book", this app would not import from or export to the device's main contact list. (There are a number of "address book" apps available, but the majority of them seem to be designed to automatically interface with your main contact list, and hence I rejected those I came across as I don't want imaginary people inter-mingling with real people in that way...would be too confusing).

So...if anyone happens to know of anything like what I'm looking for here, please feel free to comment or email if you do have suggestions. Mind you, I am only looking for iPhone/iTouch applications (not interested in either paying for or learning to use any other PDA-like devices at the moment), and not ones you need to "jailbreak" your device in order to get.

Also, if there really and truly is not anything right now that exists like what I am looking for, I would be curious about knowing whether there might be some way to get in touch with an app developer. I don't know any personally (that I know of), and I don't have a Mac to develop on myself (you seem to need one for developing iPhone/iTouch apps), so again, throwing this out into the Internet in case someone might have some input!

(And, for the record, even in the absence of this app I have made some headway on what I hope will be Anne's First Science Fiction Novel -- it's probably going to be a YA book, and it will involve brain implants, scary schoolmasters, antiques, hidden doors, and industrial espionage. I've actually got the plot structure down pretty well, I just really need to do something about these characters and making them individuals...)