Some people compare my character, Sam Darling, with me. That's because she and I share many similar traits. However, I think she's much nicer than I am. When my friends say, "In book three you...," I have to remind them that it's Samantha and not I who did such and such.
When I began the first book (begun in 1995, published in 2012) I didn't have any experience in writing books. I'd written shorter works all my life, but never a book-length project. So I did what most new writers do—I made everything too autobiographical. So I did a lot of editing on that first book and I changed a lot. There are now 6 Darling sibs instead of 9. (Nine sibs in my family.) Sam's first name was changed from Jan to Sam. (JD are my initials and I didn't want the character to have the same initials as I.) There were more things I edited as well.
What Sam and I do share are a natural curiosity about everything. And I do mean everything. I ask questions all the time, and have done that since I was very small. And I honestly don't mean to be intrusive, I am just overly curious. The big difference is that I would never look in someone's medicine cabinet or search through drawers without permission. Sam would do it without blinking.
She and I share an inability to tell a lie very well. I choose not to lie, and that has caused problems in my life. She blushes when she lies. However in the later books she's become quite good at it.
Sam is not a good housekeeper. Me either.
Sam holds a grudge. I don't. (In fact, she's a professional at it.)
She's a smart-ass. And I have to confess that I am too.
She's in love with love. Me: Guilty as charged.
She doesn't have a lot of close friends outside her family. Me either. I've always had a ton of sibs in my life, and very few close friends. When I've lived away from Quincy, I developed more friends because I didn't have my sibs close by.
That's all I can think of off the cuff.
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