People who have read my books and who know me, come up all of the time and tell me that they know who the characters are in my books. Like they are in on the conspiracy, wink wink, nod nod. It is interesting who they think that the characters are, considering that I don’t know who they are. Yes, I will admit that certain characteristics of certain people find their way into my characters. It would be pretty hard to write a novel and take particular care not to base any of the characteristics of the any of the characters on anyone I’ve ever known. But there is one character in my novels who is based on real life. That would be Tucker. You know, first book, therapy dog named Tucker gets dognapped. Case of the Missing Tucker.

I got the idea for that novel before I even thought about Tucker, and there were other dogs who belong to friends and relatives who popped in and out of my head while I was thinking about which dog would be my missing dog, but Tucker stuck. Tucker was the perfect dog for the story. And while in real life Tucker has never been dognapped and held for ransom by some ne’er-do-well named Higgins, Tucker does live with my cousin Beth, and he is a famous therapy dog.

My cousin Beth sent me one of his recently printed trading cards. A therapy dog with trading cards. If he had had trading cards when I wrote that book, I certainly would have figured out a way to incorporate it into the story. But he didn’t. I guess I could just write another novel with Tucker and his trading cards in it. Maybe, we’ll see.

There is one other character that is based on a real live person. That person said that she wanted to be a character in one of my novels, so I wrote her into one of the stories that has been published, and I just wrote her into another that is coming soon. She makes a good character. I’ll let you all figure out who that is on your own.