I’m often asked by media and friends
how do I create my characters? At last count I have somewhere in the neighborhood
of over one hundred spread over my nine published and three unpublished books.
These characters have detailed histories and vivid personalities. Some are
absolutely terrifying, some are adventurous, and some are tragic. All of my
characters are like my children and they all have one thing in common. They are
not modeled after any single, real person that I know.
Each of my individual characters are
a conglomeration, a mix, of people I’ve known and associated with over the
course of my life. This naked truth always perplexes my friends who often tell
me that a certain character is just like them in every way and how much they
relate to that particular character. I’ve even had an old girlfriend (before I
was married) get angry with me because she thought a character in one of my
novels was too much like her. I had to assure my ex that the psycho girl (who
needs to be highly medicated but isn’t taking her anti-psychotic pills) in my
novel was not based on her, but on at least eight different people, most of
whom I went to college with. I’m not certain if she believed me or not but I
recently noticed that she un-friended me on Facebook..
When I write I transform into and
become my characters. I become the clairvoyant prostitute and the daring young
man fighting an alien insect invasion. I am the disfigured 9/11 hero and the
dignified young woman dying of cancer. I immerse myself in these characters and
their worlds and live for a time in the fantasy. It would be hard for me to
pretend to be someone I know as a person, if that makes any sense.
