Hidden Mickeys in My Books

So...I'm a big Disney fan. Not so much the movies, but the theme parks. I find them creatively inspiring, and I like to visit at least one of the parks each year so that I can absorb as much of that creativity as possible. If I had even an ounce of what goes into one of those rides...it's incredible.

Anyway, if there are any Disney theme park enthusiasts out there, you'll get the reference to Hidden Mickeys. For those of you who don't, I'll take a minute to explain. See, the creativity at the parks extends beyond the obvious. The rides are ridiculously detailed and insanely awe-inspiring from the artistic perspective, but to take it a step further, the imagineer who design the rides place what they call Hidden Mickeys within the rides and around the parks. To name a few that are easy to spot:

• The pupil of the witch's eye when she holds out the apple on Snow White's scary adventure
• The plates in the captains quarters on Pirate's of the Caribbean
• The old wheels/sprockets on Big Thunder

So, what does this have to do with my books? Well, let me tell you! I hide small gems of my personal reality in my books. A line from a song or novel that has caught my interest, a scene from my real life...these things often make their way into my books. They may be obvious--Cordelia Lear, for example--or they may be deeply hidden. In fact, some are so hidden that even the people who know me best won't recognize them when they read them.

That said, all of the characters in my books are completely fictitious. Not one person is intended to be anyone in particular. There is not one character in my books that can be attached to any one person in my life or elsewhere. I get asked that a lot. Only Lia's deep sarcasm--so deep that I worry it gets read wrong at times--is based on my own dark sarcasm. Her one liners are typically the exact response I would give if face with a similar situation. I also have curly, auburn hair. Other than that, she's a figment of my imagination. Oh, and, I added Mina because, if by some off chance the book was ever made into a movie, I wanted there to be a thirty-something woman whom I could potentially play. We all have to dream...

So, what are the hidden gems in Breathless? For those you will have to stay tuned. I'll post again after I've had a chance to do a fresh read of the book, and I'll pull out a few for you. In the meantime, I can tell you that there is an umbrella scene in Wanderlust that comes straight from a situation that happened to me and my mom in London last fall, and the necklace mentioned in the book is the exactly the one shown here.

Alas, I realize this is a tease since you don't have a reference point in the book yet, but you will soon.

In the meantime, I thank you all again for your continued support, and thanks for hanging tight on Wanderlust. I know I'm behind schedule, and I apologize profusely for that.

Cheers,
HH