I’m thrilled to be doing my first guest post here on The Write Stuff. Thank you, Marcia, for rolling out the red carpet!!

The second most common question we writers tend to hear is how do we come up with our characters. (The first one being where do we get our story ideas.)

Like the story ideas, our characters come from several different sources. Some are loosely based on people we know. Some are loosely based on ourselves (the protagonist of my Kate Huntington stories is definitely my alter ego; the person I wish I was).

How I visualize Kate Huntington (maybe without the flowers) ~ photo is “Sunset at Assos” by Nevit Dilmen ~ Used with his permission ~ I love his photography!

And sometimes a character who was only supposed to have a bit part gets their teeth around that bit and takes off running. One such character…