First up: Ivy. Ivy was absolutely original. I gave her my hair at the time. I don’t know why I gave her pointed ears. I just like them. I had determined early on that she would have either too few or too many fingers, and I decided on too few for some reason. Originally I thought she was a little shorter, about 5’8”, but every time I wrote about her interaction with other people she seemed to be looking down, so I determined she must be taller than I’d originally thought. Surprise. I gave her a pretty standard science-fiction power, but she didn’t react to it normally and become a superhero. Thank goodness. So on the whole, the inspiration for Ivy came from pretty much the ether, though others have drawn comparisons after the fact. . . .

Ivy’s been compared to ElfQuest elves. This is an ElfQuest elf named Tyleet. Yup, pointy ears, long blonde hair with bangs, and no pinkies. Weird. Unintentional!	Ivy’s been compared to Kira, a Gelfling from The Dark Crystal. (Actually, so have I.) Blonde hair with bangs, again no pinkies, and funny-looking mousy ears. Boo.	And Ivy’s been compared to the elves from Lord of the Rings. That’s Galadriel. Elves are tall and have long blonde hair (usually) and pointed ears too, but regular hands.

MAIN CHARACTER comparisons get to go first, because I said so.

Let’s talk about Nina. When I was in fifth grade our class paired up with a kindergarten and we received “little buddies.” My buddy was Danielle. This was when I lived in North Carolina, too—I don’t recall that Danielle had a Southern accent like Nina does, but I do remember really loving her and finding her adorable and irresistible. She was special to me. Maybe that’s how she made it into my subconscious as the prototype for Ivy’s cute “little buddy” Nina. But who can be sure? All I can say is she looks very similar.

I must unabashedly admit at this point that when I wrote the original Skyler book, her character design was based on me. A lot of what I was writing stemmed from personal experiences so it seemed natural, and I was an immature writer so I suppose I didn’t have a lot of imagination at the time. Skyler was a couple inches taller than I but she had my long blonde hair and blue eyes, and the clothes she wore meshed with what I liked to wear.

These two guys have hair like Ruben. One is Mike Shinoda from Limp Bizkit, and the other is Dante Basco, starring as Rufio from the movie Hook. Hmm, Rufio, Ruben—maybe I had some kind of subconscious thing going on there? Probably.

Nicholas is loosely based on an old friend of mine named Jerry, who looked similar, was an old hippie, and was also vaguely batshit, but I don’t know what happened to him after he stopped coming to the Poetry Jam and I certainly don’t have a photo. He wrote crazy poems about “The Great Schwaagg” and is honestly the only person I’ve ever met who could use the word “assholistic” in a sentence. I don’t know how different the character of Nicholas would have been without knowing him, but I definitely stole his mannerisms—and his laugh—from Jerry. Good old Jerry. Where the hell is he anyway?

No other main characters are based on anybody even remotely, so we’ll move on to secondary characters:

I had a friend named Andrea in ninth grade, and my character of Andrea Brooks looks a little bit like her for some reason. The “real” Andrea was tall and had no bangs while the made-up Andrea was short and had bangs, but they both had the round-ish hazel eyes, long blonde hair, and braces. There’s no reasoning behind why I used an old friend as the inspiration behind the looks of a secondary character, but there it is.

Carl Fairchild looks an awful lot like my dad. For some reason when I created the character of Nina’s father coming home, I saw him wearing a suit and talking to Nina in his loud, booming voice, and I just got a sort of visual of how my dad would come home in his banker suit and announce that he was home, with his footsteps echoing in the house. Luckily my dad has a temperament nothing like Carl’s, but I suppose my brain defaulted to my own father when creating an automatic father figure.

As for Francis Fairchild, she brings up memories of my childhood best friend Ellen’s mom, Stevie. It was from her that I got that very lighthearted, Southern-hospitality attitude, as well as the “surprisingly high voice” I described in Book 1, chapter 6—Ellen’s mom had this nice soft high voice that made you think she was cute even though she was, you know, your friend’s mom. That’s sort of how I see Francis, and she even looks a little like Stevie. Interesting.

This is a high school photo of my friend (and later college roommate) Ammy. When I created the character of Mandy, I kept visualizing her as looking a lot like Ammy. Mandy is only half Puerto Rican, though, and her hair is not as curly as Ammy’s, and I think she’s a little taller. The slightly flirty-toward-boys and playful attitude Mandy has reflects Ammy a little bit, though it wasn’t intentional at all. Ammy also had two little sisters, and Mandy has a little sister; Kelly is based a little on Ammy’s younger sister Michelle.

My mom is vaguely reminiscent of Robin. When I created a sort of motherly figure for the house, I guess my brain jumped on the image of my mother and created a calm, maternal presence to take care of kids and hold down the fort. Robin’s a tad older than my mother and her hair’s starting to look a bit silver (though she’d still call it blonde), but when I imagine her I think of Mom, definitely.

Here’s one I bet you didn’t know! I saw this chick from Outlanders on a comic book when I first moved to Gainesville—the same time I was writing THTIB. This girl is an alien princess named Kahm. That’s about all I know. I haven’t seen the anime or read the manga. All I know is that Tab looks an awful lot like she was inspired by Kahm, and I know for a fact I saw this in the store around the same time. Just please tell me that Tab will never start dressing like this.

When I was a little kid I created these fairy-like baby creatures I called Kathabow Babies. I have no idea what the deal was with that, but they wore nothing but underwear and had fairy wings and butterfly antennae. I used to sometimes dress up like one with one of my friends, wearing headband deedlybobs and junk. And I used to draw Kathabow Babies all the time. I drew one on the dining room wall once before my mom wallpapered that room. (The wallpapering ended up very behind schedule and the Kathabow Baby on the wall stared at us during dinner for weeks.) Anyway, I’m pretty sure that’s where Thursday gets his roots—from my early days as a freaky kid drawing fairy boys.

John was my roommate in college and a great theater buff. He found that he had a talent for lighting design and drew light plots multiple times throughout his college career. When I was writing Book 3, I asked him for some valuable advice telling me what sort of people were needed to pull off a small-scale play like Ruben’s Imagination. He gave me a lot of support and told me what each tech person does. In thanks, I made the lighting designer look like him, though I named him Alex.

Also, Ivy’s English teacher, Mrs. Davis, is loosely based on my ninth grade English teacher, Mrs. Lewis. Not that anyone cares about that.

If anybody else in my books has appeared through inspiration from someone else, I’m unaware of it. So there.