I had brunch this morning with my daughters, my husband and my husband of 15 years ago.
Throughout the meal I felt strangely compelled to tell Greg the ex-husband in my completed manuscript is not him. I stopped myself several times with the reminder there is no value in denying a negative.
Characters are creations (or at least amalgamations). You always hear "write what you know," but writing who you know is another issue.
For months a rumor floated about our small community that I was writing a local tell all. Each trip to the grocery store brought certain cartpushers ducking my aisle and others going out of their way to catch up and tell all. I'd tell them the book had nothing to do with this area and get a knowing nod.
When my first book is published, I fear a large number of disapointed local sales when they don't find the familiarity they seek.
I do steal material unabashedly from strangers I observe and overhear. The green leather notebook in my purse is full of unrelated quick phrases, descriptions and conversations. In the event of fire, that notebook would likely be the first thing I'd grab (once the people and pets are clear... I'm paranoid enough to keep work in progress on a little USB storage device on the lanyard around my neck).
But you have to go with what you know. It was easy to make my first protagonist a single parent. I paid my dues to that club for eight years and knew I could write her true. She works at a horse race track. I spent a great deal of my early years around racing and worked at a track as a single parent.
I left racing, but my character is going to stay around the sport when I build her series. She's smarter, funnier and not nearly as cranky. She's got my nose, but she doesn't exist.
The book I'm working on right now has three distinctly different narrators and three strong minor characters. Each of them has a little of me... and about a dozen other people. My mind does not have the kind of canvas that can create Hobbits or boy warlocks. I was a journalist for too long.
But for all those years of writing within the constraints of "what happened" I'm finally playing with "what if."
Thus, if you know me and are wondering or fearing how and when you'll appear in a book, relax. It won't happen.
With one exception.
In the first book, I wanted a female cop to partner with the primary cop character. For her plot postion to work she had to be exceptionally competent, strong and human. I tried to duck all the cliches and kept coming back to my cousin, Stacy Stawicki. Stacy happens to be all those things and more as a homicide investigator for the New York State Police. Although the role is small, I could not write my way out of Stacy. I gave the character her name and gave Stacy the entire manuscript without comment when it was complete. She was flying home from a visit when she read it and said she laughed out loud when she found herself.
That was just what the character would have done.
I was talking to Stacy a few weeks ago about her work as a polygraph specialist. There's probably a great protagonist in that field somewhere down the line... but she'll be nothing like Stacy.