How much of you is in your characters?

I'm often asked this question about my protagonists. How much of you is in this character?

Hmmm. I have never modeled a character after myself, but a few similarities do exist.

Many of my protagonists are surgeons. I'm a surgeon, so when I'm thinking of stories, it is natural for me to think about cutters.

I find my characters drinking coffee. Often, they let the first cup drip straight into the mug they are holding. This is definitely a Kraus thing. In living in East Africa, I fell in love with Kenya's coffee beans. They are the best in the world. In my humble opinion, coffee should be enjoyed fresh after grinding the beans themselves and free of cream and sugar which disguise the taste (although if I was forced to drink lesser American brands, I might need something to help the tastebuds).

My characters love food. Hmmm. I do too.

Often my characters mirror my age. Not exactly, but I've noticed that as I've aged, so have my protagonists.

Sometimes my male protagonists exercise. But more likely my female protagonists do and I'd say that in this aspect, they reflect my better half, Kris, running-enthusiast that she is.

Often the settings I choose reflect where I live. When I wrote the Claire McCall series (beginning with the novel, Could I Have this Dance? I was living in the small town of Dayton, Virginia. I made up a small fictitious town that in my mind at least, was Dayton. In some of my more recent novels, I've chosen real locations that I know well, such as Richmond (The Six-Liter Club), Charlottesville (Perfect) or the Eastern Shore of Virginia (Salty Like Blood) where I spent a month as a med student. And of course, more and more, Africa is creeping into my writing and provided the framework for the backstory in my most recent release: The Six-Liter Club.

Concerning my protagonist's experiences, the rigors of my surgical residency provides many ideas that I slip into my books as the details that flavor my books with authenticity.

A tagline of my fiction is "grace from the cutting edge." God's grace is something that I've learned a lot about in the last decade and is to me the most precious of God's attributes. Because I am passionate about grace, I want all my protagonists to experience it too.

But concerning the conflicts, hard times, sin, and trouble....well, you have to realize that the conflict we don't want in our personal lives is the engine that drives good fiction.

If I ever write about a fifty year old, white-haired, balding, coffee-lovin', water-ski buff/ surgeon who is enamored by grace, I'll just have to call it an autobiography.

Grace,

Harry Lee