Is your main character really you?
I have two series out with two very different heroines. And yet I keep getting the comment about my main characters, from readers who know me that “she is so you.” I don’t see it but we are told to write what we know. So perhaps . . .?
Yes, I sometimes use ideas from my life when creating my heroines but I don’t think they are a lot like me. I mean they get into all kinds of trouble solving mysteries. I just write mysteries. Okay, mysteries do connect us.
One reader suggested that perhaps I am writing a character who is the person I really want to be. Wow.
I looked through my books and was a bit concerned. Do I really want to find a dead body on the beach like Hilly does in Peril at the Point, the first book of the Lamb’s Bay series? Or get abducted by a madman (Dancing at Dove Lake, book 5)? And what about finding a skeleton buried in my yard (Death at Dune Road, Book 6)?
And yes, Bailey Summers is a journalist, a profession I used to have, but I never got trapped in a cave with a maniacal police chief (Summers in San Somás, Book 1 of the Bailey Summers Mysteries) or held at gunpoint by an international terrorist and then chased by a bear (Summers in Wolf Falls, book 2). Or even got mixed up in an investigation into a brutal attack on my father (Summers in the City, book 3)?
Are Hilly and Bailey my alter egos? Or is just that I drew on my life experiences as well as research to create my heroines?
I guess we do put something of ourselves into the characters we create. Write what you know – then add in action, crimes and investigations. I love writing mysteries.
Do you see yourself in the characters you write?
Thank you for the post