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, ...