I'm often asked if people I know end up as characters in my books. I always give an unequivocal answer. Yes but no.  Or I say well, sort of, but not really. Let explain what I mean.  Take for instance, one of my favorite characters, Rosalie, Annabelle and Rich Ronaldi's Aunt Rose Albertini in Romeo, Romeo.

Aunt Rose is sharp, funny, quick with a hug or a slap upside the head, and she's psychic. No one in the Ronaldi household comes out and says so--though Annabelle has been known to call Rose a witch--but everyone knows Aunt Rose definitely has a gift.

When I was a child, my mother had a psychic friend who, for some reason, honed in on me. I didn't meet her until I was in my twenties, but she's been ratting me out to my mother since I was about eight years old.  No matter where I lived, it was as if my mother had someone following me around and reporting to her.

I remember one day when I was about seventeen. I was living in Pennsylvania with my father and hanging around with a very interesting crowd. My mother lived in Florida at the time and called me, very upset. Never one to beat around the bush, she immediately accused me of hanging around with a blonde-haired boy who drove a white Toyota hatchback and was doing drugs. I was too dumbfounded to deny it. "How do you know this?" I asked. All she said was, "I have my sources."

About seven years later at my sister's wedding, I met mother's "source" when I was introduced to Millie. She took my hand, looked at me with a devilish twinkle her kind eyes, and said, "I've known you since you were a young child." She then recounted several of my lesser-known escapades and had a good laugh at my expense. Millie and I have been close friends since we met in person, though she says she's loved me since the first day she saw me.

Having a friend like Millie does take some getting used to. There is no such thing as surprising her. I'll never forget the day I called her and said "Guess what I got!" She answered. "A dog. A big black dog." I had just gotten a puppy--the inspiration for Dave, Rosalie's dog in Romeo, Romeo.  Clancy was half Black Lab, and half St. Bernard. Millie's timing was a little off since Clancy was all of ten pounds the day we brought her home, but just like Millie said, she became a dog, a big black dog. Clancy topped 150 pounds before she was a year and a half old.

Millie is incredibly talented, smart, sassy, funny and she has a so many gifts, only one of which is being psychic. I'm so lucky to have her in my life, but I don't mind saying that I'm thrilled that she's no longer ratting out.  She's assured me that she'll gladly rat out my kids the same way she did me--something I remind them repeatedly. My kids, however, know Millie as Aunty Midge, and they're smart enough to watch their Ps and Qs. The sad part is, she said my kids are a lot better than I was--but I bet they're not as much fun.

Aunt Rose isn't Millie. The two are very different and when I think about it, there's little about them that is alike…except that they're both Italian, both psychic, and people who meet them love them immediately.

Are there any characters in your life you would like to see in a book? Or if you're a writer, do people you know end up in your books?

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