It starts as young children. We have imaginary friends who we talk to and pretend are real. We go on imaginary adventures with them, we make up families for them, and we imagine where they go when they are not with us. This can be the birth of an author. We may not be aware of what we are doing at such a young age, but we are creating characters. Imaginary people who become real enough to us that we talk to them…and they talk to us. I recently posed a question to some authors asking them what was the funniest thing one of their characters had ever said to them was and the response was amazing! Our characters have minds of their own in our minds. They compliment, they insult, and they even refuse to do something we have written for them. The power of imagination is an amazing thing to behold. Have you ever listened to a child have a conversation with someone who is not there? Not only does their voice change, but their whole demeanor can change as well…the way the hold their body, the...

I once heard mystery author Diane Mott Davidson speak at a convention. She said her fictional victims were often based on annoying people she met in real life. Until I wrote The Desert Hedge Murders , my characters were completely imaginary, most likely influenced by memories of everyone I've ever known, even if they were only actors in a movie. With this second Sylvia and Willie mystery, I tried something new. In creating The Florida Flippers, a travel club of elderly ladies, I borrowed the names of four of my female relatives, aged them, and kept that imagined appearance in my mind as I wrote their story. One of the characters, Kristina Grisseljon, is the mother of my protagonists, Sylvia Thorn and Willie Grisseljon. She was briefly in the first novel of the series and is not modeled after a real person. Linda Swayble, one of the Flippers, is named after my sister-in-law Linda, who sadly passed away just before the book was released. I added about fifteen years to her age, ...