This post originally appeared on the Roses of Prose blog.

Don’t you just love the various questions we get from our readers? Where do you get your ideas? What is your favorite book? What is your favorite character? Are you in any of your books?

I think we are all in every character we create, don’t you? Not all of us in each one, but a bit of us, to be sure.

Take my Mad Max character. I don’t look anything like her. She’s short, athletic, blond. She’s much younger than I am. She’s ever so much richer that I am. But, she’s snarky. Anyone who knows me knows I love a good snark at the appropriate or inappropriate time. We’re both strong-willed, brook no nonsense, stand true to our beliefs, and will fight to the death for our friends and family. Maybe a bit of me is in Mad Max, but more of her is a composite for several women I know, and several I want to know.

I had an actress in mind when Max came into her full-throated self. A strong actress who also puts up with no stuff from anyone. I won’t tell you who she is, but she’s been on television and in the movies for many years. Care to guess?

My latest book will be formally released on Halloween. It’s called Eyes Without A Face. I hope to goodness I’m not the main character. Why? Because this is a girl you don’t want living next door. You first meet her when she introduces herself:  “No matter what anyone says, I wasn’t born a serial killer. I don’t carry a sociopath gene, a psychopath gene, or even a serial killer gene. No such thing.”

She is a serial killer, a most unreliable narrator. Unnamed and relatively faceless, she tells her story in first person singular. Before you ask, it was darned creepy getting into the head of a psychopath, who lived in my head on and off for three years. Not content with revealing her narcissistic personality disorder, she had to display psychopathic tendencies, only to rip them away and deny she is indeed a psychopath. See what I mean about being an unreliable narrator.

Unnamed, That Thing, her childhood name, leads the reader along a series of different paths. Just when the reader thinks she has That Thing figured out, That Thing does something to upset all assumptions. She lives by her own code of ethics. Yes, serial killers can have codes of ethics. Warped, maybe, but codes nonetheless.

I don’t think That Thing is me. I haven’t killed anyone, although there are a few people who might make it onto a wish list. I killed them in the pages of Eyes. That Thing is a feminist; so am I. She wants equal acknowledgment that a woman could be a serial killer, even though most are men. Why not a woman, she asks more than once, only to be dismissed by the men she works with.

That Thing is loyal to herself. And she doesn’t tolerate people who take advantage of weaker people, particularly women, children, and the elderly. If they fall into her sights, well, they might meet a particularly gruesome and satisfactory ends. I’ve met people I’d like to see done in and meet a particularly gruesome and satisfactory ends. I haven’t acted on my impulses; I left that to That Thing.

So, am I in my characters? Yeah, kinda. Do you think a writer puts herself in her characters, even those that are unsavory?