CREATING CHARATORS

Ever since I started publishing my Catherine Jewel series, I’ve had people asking me if any of my characters are based on real people, and I tell them for the most part they are not.

However I usually do mention that my Ed Flavian character is based on the brother who was closest in age to me – my brother Jerry. Of course, my brother didn’t work in a large public garden like Elmwood Gardens, but he did a lot of gardening on his farm of over one hundred acres. Mostly he planted hostas and rhododendrons. He even bred his own hostas by cross pollinating or something. He also put in a small vegetable garden, too. Unless, he had to dress up to go someplace with his wife, he dressed in old jeans and shirts and a straw hat. I loved my brother because although he teased me a lot as we were growing up, he had a wacky sense of humor that caused everyone to laugh, especially after he was grown up and married a very special woman, Joanne, who became our sister-in-law. Unlike Ed Flavian, they married and had two daughters, and he was a wonderful parent.

In my book, Ed Flavian is married to a woman named Violet. After Joanne read the book, she kept saying she was Violet. I kept telling her she was not Violet, but she kept insisting she was. Like Jerry she has a wonderful sense of humor and everyone who meets her almost instantly becomes another one of her good friends.

My mother-in-law & her husband at my previous home.

The next character I based on someone I knew was Millie Mullens, who was the cook in the Wisteria Tearoom at Elmwood Gardens. Like my long deceased mother-in-law, when her red hair started to turn gray, she dyed it red again. She also wore glasses with thick lenses. And like my mother-in-law, she was very nosy and sometimes asked questions that were totally inappropriate like several hours after my son died in my arms, she showed up with her husband, and the first thing she asked me was “How many breaths did he take before he died?”

I'm with Grace in her greenhouse a few weeks ago.

Mostly I’ve never based characters on anyone I know until this past year when I met a really special woman who is 91 years old. A tiny bit of a woman who had lovely gardens around her home, which at one time was a brick school building. She also has a greenhouse attached to the back of her house filled with orchids and some other plants that aren’t common like clivia, an expensive plant I’d never heard of with beautiful flowers. In the winter she brings in large pot after pot of geraniums as well as ferns, other blooming plants, and a lemon tree or two. Some are in there year round, but most brought in to live through the cold winters. I have bought some orchids from her and a clivia.

Two orchids and on the left a clivia with buds close to opening.

One of the things that fascinated me about Grace when I first met her, and she found out I write mysteries, she brought out a three-ring notebook with pages and pages with the names of authors at the top and a list of each book that author had written as well as a short paragraph about the book. She was an avid reader much as I am, but instead of having a lot of books, most of her books came from the library. I started mailing her copies of my books, and after that she insisted on giving me an orchid or a clivia when I came to visit. In book seven I moved Grace, her house and gardens and her greenhouse to Portage Falls. 

When I sent her a copy of the book after it was published, I sent a note with it saying I hoped she wasn’t unhappy that I’d moved her out of Louisville and to Portage Falls. I got a letter back that she laughed when she read the book and her son did, too.

The book the Davis family first is included.

Once, a woman in one of my book clubs started nagging me to use her name in one of my books. She’s rather an annoying person and told me she didn’t care if she was a murderer or a victim she just wanted her name in one of my books. So I did use her name, Claudia.

It was in a book in which I introduced an African American family to Portage Falls. The father is a science teacher. The mother is a lawyer in a big law firm in Cleveland. They have two special nine year old twins; Hanna who tends to boss her twin, Teddy, who goes along with her. And there are two elderly sisters, a grandmother of Linc Davis, the father, and her sister, a great aunt. My critique partners and others, who are enjoying the books, like the family a lot. But then I heard from Claudia after Mass one Sunday, She said, “You not only had to make me old, you had to make me black.” She wasn’t happy, although those who know her and my books think it’s funny. Because the Davis family is enjoyed by my critique partners and friends, especially the twins, I’ve gone on to include them in some of my other books as well as Grace.

I also included someone I didn’t know in a short story. It was a man I found hanging in my woods one morning when I was walking there. He was a suicide, but in my short story he was murdered and made to look like a suicide.

Have you ever included real people in your books or stori