What My Characters Have Taught Me

I thought I was just telling stories.
Turns out, my characters were teaching me something too.

When I created Grace Walker in Underneath the Fireflies, I gave her a gift that felt more like a curse. Empathic visions that showed her terrible things she couldn’t unsee. After a tragic workplace accident, she retreats to a remote island hoping for peace, quiet, and maybe even a chance to heal.

But the visions follow her.

As I wrote Grace’s story, I realized I was exploring my own relationship with feeling too much and carrying things I couldn’t easily explain. The way she questioned herself when others dismissed what she knew to be true, that felt familiar. So did the exhaustion of holding onto things no one else could see.

I didn’t mean to write those parts of myself into her story.
But somehow, they found their way there anyway.

Every character I’ve written has revealed something to me, about fear, resilience, grief, love, and what people are capable of surviving.

The Woman Who Lost Everything

Ruby, or Kathleen, as she once was, lost everything in a single night. Her family was murdered. Her identity erased. Even her face was changed. When I wrote Finding Ruby Draker, I kept coming back to one question: who would you become if your entire life was taken from you?

Ruby taught me that resilience rarely looks inspiring in the moment.

She didn’t wake up brave and fearless. Most of the time, she was frightened, angry, grieving, and simply trying to survive. Her journey wasn’t graceful. It was messy, painful, and uncertain, and that’s what made her feel real to me.

Writing her reminded me that healing doesn’t always mean returning to who you were before. Sometimes it means learning how to carry your scars differently. Sometimes survival itself is enough.

The Spy Who Carried His Past

Then there’s Reinhardt, a man shaped by the Cold War, secrets, and impossible choices. As a CIA operative connected to the heart of the Draker series, he carries the weight of decisions that can never fully be undone.

Writing him forced me to think about guilt, redemption, and the ways our past follows us, even when we try to outrun it.

What do we owe the people we’ve hurt?
Can we ever truly leave our past behind?

In Shadows in the Aftermath, the Draker family faces devastating loss while confronting impossible decisions of their own. They’re grieving people they love, yet they’re still expected to protect others, make sacrifices, and keep moving forward.

There are no easy answers for them.
Only choices they have to live with.

Those characters taught me something important about grief. It rarely arrives neatly. Sometimes it looks like anger. Sometimes numbness. Sometimes it’s the desperate need to stay busy because slowing down means feeling everything all at once.

And sometimes family isn’t the people you were born to. Sometimes it’s the people who save you when everything falls apart.

What They’ve Given Me

Looking back, I think each character gave me something different.

Grace taught me to trust the quiet voice inside me, even when it’s easier to doubt myself. Ruby showed me that people can endure unimaginable loss and still keep moving forward. Reinhardt reminded me that we can’t change the past, but we can face it honestly.

And the Draker family, in all their brokenness and loyalty, reminded me that love often means making difficult choices and carrying the consequences together.

My characters are often braver than I am. They say the things I hesitate to say out loud. They forgive when I’m still holding onto hurt. They keep going when they have every reason not to.

I never expected writing fiction to become so personal.

But somewhere along the way, these stories became more than plots and dialogue. Each character began carrying pieces of fear, hope, grief, strength, and questions I didn’t fully know I was asking.

Maybe that’s the real power of fiction.

C.S. Lewis once wrote, “We read to know we are not alone.” I think stories give us exactly that: a way to recognize pieces of ourselves in someone else’s journey.

Through characters, we can face loss, courage, heartbreak, resilience, and hope in ways that help us better understand ourselves, and each other.

My characters have reminded me to be gentler with myself. To accept that being human is messy and imperfect. That strength doesn’t always look heroic. Sometimes it simply means getting through the day and trying again tomorrow.

And honestly, I think we all need that reminder sometimes.