It's all in the family - #MFRW Author 52-week Blog Challenge

This week's blog challenge writing prompt focuses on family members, friends, and pets who made it into my books.

That's easy: None of them. Like "My Secret Life," aspects of people I know and like become attached to characters, but no character is so closely drawn as to resemble a specific person. On the obverse, people whom I know and dislike do make it into my stories. Let's just say they're not written to elicit reader support.

There's the supercilious association president in Cassia, who treats our heroine with disrespect because he considers her utterly inferior. The unreasonable clients in Rowan who demand service and state expectations that go far beyond contracted scopes of service come from my experience.

When it comes to bad bosses and/or clients, one might say I have plenty of material from which to draw ... and I do.

I don't know why those people make it into my books and not the wonderful folks whom I'm privileged to know. Perhaps it's because I don't want to share those good people. I want to hold them close. Or perhaps writing out the rotten ones is cathartic, a way of relieving the stress of their toxic impact upon my life. Regardless, I'm happy to be rid of them.

Pets don't often feature in my books, which seems strange because I'm surrounded by them. However, there's Chester, the spitting attack bunny in Tiger in the Snow. Yes, rabbits really can spit. They have pretty good aim and distance, too. And, yes, they're surprisingly aggressive and territorial. Want to mess with a bunny's mind? Rearrange the accessories in its cage. That infuriates them.

I've got stories to tell about our house bunnies (different from dust bunnies).

I will say that when we saw Tangled, Disney Studios' 2010 animated retelling of Rapunzel, my husband, our children, and I all exclaimed "Stasia!" at the introduction of equine character Maximus. The personality resemblance to my old mare was, in a word, uncanny.