Shaping a HeroOne of the most frequent questions people ask me is, “Do you use real people in your novels?” The answer is no—not really. To paraphrase Mary Renault, who, by the way, is one of my very favorite authors of all time, a writer’s mind is like a magpie’s nest, with odds and ends, and features and habits and mannerisms that all jumble together and reassemble someplace outside conscious control. So a single character in one of my stories may be made up of bits and pieces of many people I’ve met, or known, or even just seen at some time or another. Sometimes I remember the reference, or the journal page where I made the observation, but usually, my characters just bubble up from the matrix of my imagination.My heroes, on the other hand, all stem from one clear source. He was my first love, first lover. I tore him out of my life because I was sixteen and naïve, and life got away from me and sent us to opposite sides of the world. But he left a lifelong imprint of what I think a man should be. My heroes may differ in build and coloring, but they all share his inner crystalline core of honor and truth, and in each of them you will find echoes of his intelligence, his humor, his sensuality, and his compassion.
Author: Cait
Category: Uncategorized
January 2008 ![]()