Criminal Minds: Who I Am, Who I’m Not

In my latest blog post at Criminal Minds, I tackle the question about whether my protagonists are really me—but what seems a yes or no questions quickly becomes more muddled. Here’s a sample:

I’m a late-fortysomething guy, and Louise, the narrator of the stories in On the Road with Del & Louise, is a woman nearly two decades younger—and probably a lot better looking too, at least how I imagine her. Even in the stories I’m working on now, about a crime-solving duo—a bookseller and accountant (I’m not kidding)—there’s great distance between me and them: Emerson Royce is agoraphobic, a full decade older than me, and he carries a linebacker’s build, and Zoe Jacobs is mid-twenties, sports an attentively tousled pixie cut, and often suspects the universe is telling her something.

No similarities whatsoever, right?

And yet… Louise and I both grew up in small-town North Carolina, both remember fondly the smell of cut grass on a dewy morning and the taste of honeysuckles, and both had similar reactions to the price of wine tastings in Napa Valley. Emerson—Emmery, to his friends—and I drink the same teas and browse online for similar first editions and limited printings of rare books. And Zoe drives a Karmann Ghia convertible very much like the one I once wanted when I was a kid. Oh, and I read my horoscope every day.

Read the full post here.

And P.S.—that’s Gustave Flaubert in the picture. Read the original post, and you’ll know why he’s here.