Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Fiction in Real Life #1

A friend stopped by the other day. It was the first time she’d been to my house, and she walked from room to room as if she were looking for something. Turns out she was. She knew that the characters in my first two books shared my home, and she wanted to imagine them coming down the stairs or sitting in the living room.


So much of real life sneaks into the fiction authors are creating, so I decided to occasionally show a photo of a location or an item from my books.


This is Linda’s prayer chair from both Searching for Spice or Out of Her Hands.

It had belonged to her grandmother and when she needed a quiet moment she would settle herself into the Victorian antique and pray.


This chair actually belonged to my grandmother. We never met, she passed away only months before I was born. When I inherited the chair it was covered in chipped, black lacquer. It took me weeks of patient work to strip the gooey stuff from the intricately carved wood. We had it reupholstered about a dozen years ago.


The pillows are some that I made. I’ve always had a creative urge, and for a time I worked with designers to make custom pillows and table coverings.


These days I string together words to make stories. Speaking of, I better get back to my characters. I left them in suspended animation about to have a revealing conversation.

3 comments:

Melinda said...

I inherited my g'mother's first engagement ring....the diamond i chipped, super tiny, but I love it and cherish it. It's special (it's not the engagement ring i wear, but its the one i wear when my ring is in the shop...flawed and all)

Jan Parrish said...

So is it also Megan's prayer chair?

Michelle said...

Someone did a good job reupholstering the chair. You did a wonderful job with the pillows.