Mary J. McCoy-Dressel

Week 28: Putting yourself in the story

I’m late with posting to the blog hop, but here I am now with a 52-Week Blog Challenge post. Taking part this late means I missed the Linky Sign up deadline.

Let’s begin:

This topic came around a year or two ago, but I can’t find the post referring to it.

No, I don’t put me, the actual person into my stories. Nope. Not as “myself,” but events in my life and more, aspects of my personality, or the way I think about things–negatively and positively, have turned up in many of them.

I admit, some aspects of my personality do come out in my story. How can it not? I know myself so well.

• Moonlight is important to some of my characters. Could this be because I’m a moonchild? Regardless, to me and my characters, moonlight is romantic.
• I’ve worked with kids all my life. My characters relate to kids like I do.
• Family is a major part of my branding as it is important to my life. My books have strong family ties.
• I’ve used settings from places I’ve lived, which oftentimes reveals memories that might end up in a book.
• Without realizing it, some of my wardrobe and decorating styles have come out in my characters.
• In my upcoming book five in the Double Dutch Ranch Series, I mention a tragic episode that I had experienced in my life.

This happened outside of the book and in the interim between books four and five, so readers never experience the event. Readers will find glimpses of the aftermath through the eyes of the Carlson family. I’m sure this will move avid readers of the series and make them ask “why?” Because:

• My characters experience emotion, empathy, and real-life situations. I suppose that’s another reason some of these events are brought into my books.

These are some ways I add similarities to events I’ve experienced either first-hand or how I saw it through the eyes of someone else, but I tend to keep a lot of me hidden. To the best of my knowledge, my heroines are more themselves than me, because a girl can’t give away all her secrets.

As always, we can find the other participants at this Linky Link on the main Marketing for Romance Writers Blog. #MFRWauthor

Thanks for reading!

October 2019!