Jonathon/Dawson

The three main characters in my book are based on my kids. I have other stories where the characters are completely made up, based on nobody/nothing at all, but this book, this series, Dawson, Cris and Casey are Jonathon, Duncan and Kaes, and it's all their fault.

When Jonathon was a little boy, we came home during a thunderstorm, and just as he got out of the car (after a crash of thunder overhead) he said, "Dragon roar, dragon boom." I thought my mind was going to explode. Those four words overflowed with possibility, with creative genius. I tried to think of a story, but nothing came. Duncan came along and I tried several times to write a story about two brothers and dragons. Nothing worked (though those pathetic attempts are still on my computer). Then Kaes came along and suddenly so did the story. It was waiting for the little sister, the princess, and once she got here, things started falling into place. People who know my kids recognize them in their character counterparts.

Last night, Kaes's friend left her bike at our house when she went home. It wasn't late, but it was already dark outside when Kaes decided she would take the bike over to her friend's house, three houses down from ours. I was in the living room with Matthew and Jonathon when we heard this terrible screaming outside. Jonathon took off like a bullet. I was right behind him, but the boy is six feet tall and runs like a gazelle; he reached his sister long before I did. It turns out our neighbor's dog two houses over had gotten out of the house just as Kaes was walking past and came running up to her. Kaes, who LOVES dogs (and anything else with fur) has been told for over a year that she can't pet this particular dog because he doesn't do well with strangers. In her mind, that meant he was a mean dog, and when he came running up to her, she freaked out. He didn't hurt her, but she was pretty shook up about it.

The point of this story is that Dawson really does love and take care of his sister (and his brother). Do Jonathon and Kaes have the same relationship as Dawson and Casey? No. They are not exactly the same (for one thing, my kids don't really have dragons, darn it) and it's true that Dawson, Cris and Casey are a little idealized. But the love is real, and Dawson is an awesome big brother. He should be: he's based on my Jonathon.

Facing my fears

One day I will be published (see how I'm being positive here?) and when I am, and my book will be loved by many (still being positive...), somebody is going to ask me where the inspiration came from and all that jazz (or at the very least there's some universal disclaimer that everything in the book is fictitious and non of the characters are real). I'm going to have a problem at that point because Dawson, Cris and Casey are my three kids, and that's just the way it is. Okay, so the dragons aren't real, but the kids are, and though most of the dialogue in the book is not actual quotes, some of it is (though can they be quotes if they were written first and then Kaes said them years later?). Nobody is going to want to listen to me talk about my kids in these future interviews, and yet the characters really do represent what I live with at home. (Okay, that is not precisely true either, especially considering some of the things my daughter has done recently, but since she isn't going to be six forever, I will not go into detail here, a show of restraint on my part which should win me the Best Mom Ever award. But I digress.) In the book, Casey is fearless, that's her Thing. In my all-too-real life, Kaes is also fearless, or at least fear-impaired. I offer this as an example.

Recently my family went on vaction to Moab, Utah, with my sister's family. At one of our stops in Arches, my daughter went off with her uncle and climbed a rather large rock. The rock was about the size of a house and right next to the parking lot (we were filling water bottles and such before taking off down the trail). When they came back down, my brother-in-law told us about the conversation he had had up on the rock with my daughter. Kaes wanted to climb higher (there were levels to the rock and they had stopped at the first, single-story-house level). Aaron, bless him, suggested that maybe they shouldn't, to which my daughter replied, "Uncle Aaron, you have to face your fears. That's what I do." Aaron, bless him EVEN MORE, tried to explain that sometimes you should listen to your fears because they're trying to tell you that something is dangerous and not a good idea. I doubt his advice will have any bearing on Kaes's future decisions, but the words are in her brain somewhere, spoken by somebody other than her parents (and she really loves Uncle Aaron) and he was able to convince her to come back down and not go any higher. That was a very Casey thing to do, and I'm going to have a hard time talking about Casey (someday) and not relating that story about Kaes. How frustrating.

However, that is not the whole reason for this post. In honor of my daughter's exhortation to 'face your fears', I want to announce that I have officially sent off my first actual query letter to an actual agent of an actual agency that I did not make up in my head. I am actually (yes, I'm using that word a lot, leave me alone) in a happy place right now where it is not really real yet. Once it becomes real I will have to stress, because that is what I do. But my husband gave me a very 'you are wonderful, and a coward' pep talk this afternoon and told me to send it out. And my six-year-old climbs rocks that are way too freaking big for her. So I did it.