“Honey, what’s wrong?” He asks alarmed.

“It’s Abby.” I reply.

He sits down and you can see the confusion written all over his face. He’s franticly trying to remember without asking me which side of the “family” this relative is on.

All the while still maintaining his sympathetic look, he asks. “What happened to her?”

Ah, the opening I’ve been waiting for and I’m off! I begin telling him how I want her to do this, but she looks down her nose at me and stubbornly shakes her head no. Then I ask her kindly if she will meet me in the middle and she has the nerve to smile, because she knows she has me right where she wants me-over a barrel. That is when I agree to a 60/40 compromise on what I wanted her to do.

I let out an exasperated sigh. By this time I’ve worked myself into a lather.

“You know,” I say “she’s forgetting who created her!”

Insert blank look on husbands face here. Girls have you ever seen your husband’s face when the buddy next door gets the golf clubs he’s been eyeing all year long? Yep, that’s the one. That’s the look I get. The one of disbelief because he’s just realized that I am not talking about a relative in dire need, but a character in my current WIP. Of course, he doesn’t think I notice that his look has now changed from concern to amusement, but I do. He wants to smile but he doesn’t. He just politely stands up and bends down, gently placing a kiss on my head as if to say “you poor tortured soul.” I grin to myself because I know I am home free-again! He’s left the door wide open and as I follow him into the kitchen he hears my voice trailing behind him.

“And honey, just wait until you hear what William is trying to pull!”



The moral of this story you may be wondering? It’s simple really. Let your characters be as real to you as the everyday people in your life. The ones you love and depend on and could not do without and oh yeah, every once in a while give them that 60/40 compromise because they are what makes the beautiful world we create for them go round.