After months of excitement, Mel and I attended a very important class reunion of mine two weeks ago back in Missouri, where we both grew up. I had a small class of 44 members, and a great many of us grew close and kept in touch often after graduation. That closeness became obvious when we all greeted one another at the restaurant for lunch on Saturday. It was very much like a family reunion—we all did, indeed, grow up together.

I was thrilled to connect with so many old friends. We could have spent a week catching up. Our hometown was always a farming community, and many of those class members remained on their farms. Others moved away and pursued other careers. All have endured hardships and trials in their lives and have grown from it. How I admire them.

One thing Mel and I were especially excited about was meeting with the namesake of our male protagonist in One Strong Man, Leonard (Leo) Abramovitz. Mel got to break the news to Leonard that he was our hero in this book, and was a vital character in two of the earlier books. I think he was interested. At any rate, he’ll get a copy of the book when we’ve finished it at the end of this month.

I have utilized my experiences with other members of my class in other books. But despite the fact that I used their names and certain aspects of their personalities to make fictitious characters, those characters are definitely fictitious. For instance, I used Doris Batschelet (our editor in this series) as a name for one of our characters, but in that book I described that Doris as a bad cook. Our real Doris took issue with this because she is an excellent cook. I know because I’ve tasted her cooking. She makes the best guac I’ve ever eaten. I’ve also used, Shona, Sheila, Linda, Sherry, Deb, Tess, Kathryn…and a host of others. More will crop up in the future.

These characters might reflect certain aspects of a real person, but there is no way to write a real person into a book. There are too many intricacies in real people. Too many nooks and crannies. Too much depth in each real person to reflect their whole characters in fiction. A novel is a bare whisper of real life, not the reality itself. Real human beings are so much more vital than shallow characters in a novel.

And so even though I try to bless our readers with visits from real, existing human beings, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to meet these real people for yourself in order to understand what they’re really all about.

Here’s to the next class reunion!