I’m a people person. You know the type. The chatty extrovert in the room who flits from person to person and subject to subject. So how did someone like me, write a novel, spending hours alone, and love it? The answer is, all the interesting people who I’ve met over the years.

I need to thank all of you, may I put this bluntly, for all the stories, human characteristics, the kind and sometimes downright mean people who have crowded their way into my mind and squatted there. They dared me to change them, rearrange them into fictional beings and to release them on paper.

I’m intrigued by the way a teenage girl flings her hair over her shoulder when a guy approaches her or the way someone’s eyes light up when they talk about something they love. Then there’s the person whose foot is always moving even while they’re sitting still. Darting eyes, looking over the top of glasses, or someone who swears they’ve seen a ghost, and I’m hooked. Yes hooked, like a fish on a line I’m reeled in to search out the reason behind their actions.

The world is full of color waiting to be discovered as an observer and not just a butterfly. So I learn to listen to it and to speak on paper.