Meet me at Mt. Rui-interrupted…

“Are you Tana?” A very enthusiastic friend asked me over coffee this past week. “What?” I said kind of taken off guard. “Is the character you have been talking about on your blog based on you?” She asked. Simple enough question I guess. But the thought never crossed my mind until now.

As you know, I have been blogging about Tana to help you guys become acquainted with the main gal in my first work, “Risk”. Now I realize I may have been remiss, assuming you all knew as much as I did about this intriguing, fast-paced thriller.(not the first mistake on my growing list of new author hiccups) Forgive me for leaving out some important details. Let’s see if I can bring you up to speed.

The novel is fiction, not yet published and I’m in the process of searching for an agent.

Now I have been very fortunate to be surrounded by many generous mentors(generous and patient, very patient) who gave me the advice to write about what I know, what I have seen or maybe even how I wanted things to be. Don’t get me wrong, Tana and I do have a few things in common, we both are pilots.

Here is the short answer to my dear friend’s question.(one that now seems pretty obvious to me) When I decided to write the main character Tana, I initially toyed with the idea of making her male. It made sense since almost all the people I’d flown with were men.(back to writing what you know) But then it occurred to me, wouldn’t it be interesting to fashion this character from another point of view? So I combined the personalities of three of the Senior Captains who I’d gotten to know, massaged their traits into one uber pilot and then swapped genders.(enter the character Tana Lyre)

So is Tana my alter ego? No, not really at all. But I can’t help but hope that every once in awhile one of my notorious “quips” or my off beat sense of humor finds its way into her complicated head.

I’m sure by now you are wishing you wore your comfortable shoes and packed a snack for the off-road trek I dragged you on. Bear with me. Next week I promise to meet you on Mt. Rui.