WHERE DO YOU DIG UP THOSE ODDBALLS? by Kathy McIntosh
Occasionally readers ask me where I find the weird
characters that populate my novels. I think they’re wondering if I’m a little
nuts myself.
We can assume I have a few screws loose because I choose to
write novels. That confessed, let’s move on to my characters.
Several years ago, my daughter, an environmental activist,
invited me to breakfast with an activist friend of hers whose “forest” name is
Roadkill. Roadkill wears the skins of animals he finds beside the road and tans
himself. He was (and is still) truly a character, who teaches brain tanning and
friction fire starting. My daughter, by the way, is known as Frog.
In Mustard’s Last
Stand, a failing screenwriter joins his oddball brother Roadkill to save
safari animals on land once owned by the Mustard family. A serendipitous
meeting with a unique individual inspired an entire novel.
“Canned hunts” for elk, deer and many kinds of wild birds do
exist in Idaho and other states, and in my book I try to point out, with a
little humor, some of their drawbacks.
Most of the other
characters I dream up are products of my imagination—I don’t name them after my
family members and I don’t pattern them (at least not consciously) after family
or friends. But sure enough, my daughter announced that she knew who she was in
Mustard’s Last Stand. Really? I’m
planning to use her as the model for a character in my third book and I have no
doubt she will wonder why she was left out of that book.
HINT TO WRITERS: You can
use the personality traits of that former boss or ex you want to kill off in a
novel as long as you disguise them in another physical body: the opposite sex
or a different ethnicity, for example. Most readers won’t recognize themselves
because we all see ourselves differently than others perceive us.
Bio Information:
Kathy’s irrepressible wit and writing
helped her be chosen one of Idaho’s top three emerging fiction writers in 2014.
Since then her wanderlust and a few pratfalls on ice landed her in a sunnier
clime in Tucson.
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Comments
Roadkill? Frog? You know way more colorful people than I do! This sounds like such an entertaining, fun book. I confess I often use characteristics of real people I know to populate my mysteries as well. Of course, the best one was my daughter-in-law's cat from hell who ended up a character in three different short stories.
Wait, what does that say about me? Hmmm.
Nikki, I got permission from the original Roadkill and sent him a book, but he's never told me if he liked or hated my portrayal!
Thanks to all of you for dropping by.
J.Q. I DO have fun, most of the time. And you're right, we should enjoy our profession.
Thanks again for putting out the welcome mat.
I think it is cool that you got to put a friend in your novels, at her request. I've named a couple of restaurants/stores after some friends' last names.
Hope you enjoyed Sisters in Crime Meeting.
Mary Ball
Thanks for stopping by.
Thanks for stopping by. Actually Roadkill is what the real man actually calls himself. At a conference where I spoke, a woman rushed up afterward and announced that she's met the real Roadkill at a conference on primitive living, where Jeff (Roakill) teaches flint fire starting and brain tanning.