Meet USAF Engineer Master Sergeant Briggs. The poor chap thought he was in for a dull birthday off-duty, but then he gets a mysterious gift from Area 51. Before he knows it, he's got Madison and her loquacious parrot, Sir Rupert, literally falling out of time and into his lap. Talk about a surprise party!
Spy Who Kissed Me: Isabel “Stan” Stanley describes herself as this way: Isabel. Picture someone petite, fragile and blonde, done is soft pastels, lusciously formed–and you’ll know how I don’t look. Most people find it less stressful to call me Stan when faced with a reality that is tall, lots of leg and colored in crayons in brown and pasty white.
After Luci, I “met” Dani in The Last Enemy. I like to think that Dani is more “everywoman” than me. While she is a bit understated (like me) she is a famous romance author (I’m not). What I loved about her is that was the best of the women I’d met in my real life, and the writing women I’d met online. She uses humor and determination to defeat the forces aligned against her and she’s happy to have a happy ending with the hero–but strong enough to have gone on if he’d been too chicken to man up and propose. I liked that about her. But she is a LOT braver than I’d be in the same circumstances. A lot. (Not much real me in this one.)
Moving along to my next novel, Out of Time, we have Mel who is amazingly enough, tall. Sara in The Key is a tall red-head (also on my wish list and I even tried it for a while because you can change your hair color). She is fearless and flies space ships. Not me at all, though I would like to fly/ride in a helicopter, which I accomplished fictionally in Tangled in Time…by a tall heroine named Olivia. (Do I need to provide an answer?) And Doc in Girl Gone Nova? Dangerous, deadly…and yeah, tall. (not much real here)
Let’s see, Emily in Steamrolled is also tall. Ashe in Kicking Ashe? Tall. Even my short story characters are tall. (still not real)
What they aren’t is stacked. It seems my imagination isn’t quite good enough to imagine what that would be like, though I have tried. (And I can read and enjoy books about stacked heroines.)
As I’ve gotten older, I have found a few good things about being short. I can see stuff that the hubby can’t. When I fall down, I don’t have time to pick up much speed. They have petite lengths in pants now, so not so much shortening of hems. My husband thinks I’m cute.
For a writer? That is a seriously cool moment, the payoff for when the writing felt more like bleeding, for the re-writing, the pacing, and the pondering. But it does make it complicated when people ask me if the characters are based on my life or me? Let’s face it, it all comes from my brain, though sometimes it doesn’t feel like it does. It feels like I”m watching it happen, like a movie or real life. So if I hesitate, that’s why.
P.S. In early drafts my characters are also always more patient than I am until I realize that’s just not realistic and turn them loose. And I hose them a lot, which would make a saint lose patience and I haven’t written a saint yet.