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Many writers have heard that age-old adage about sticking to the knitting. Write what you know, we're often told. Of course, this is sound advice...to a point. If such a thing were stricly true, our subject matters would be severely limited. If it were strictly true, Gene Roddenberry would never have been able to create Star Trek. And how really terribly awful would that have been? It truly would have been awful! No Captain Kirk. No Spock. No Sulu and all the other wonderful characters and adventures into outer space that wonderful series has brought into our lives? You get my point!

How many romance writers have been vampires or werewolves, or had lovers who were vampires or werewolves, or met Scottish lairds of aulde trapped in the future with only the heroine of the story to help them negotiate the twenty-first century? Of course, we have to take the knitting advice with at least a baseball-sized grain of salt. How do we build these other worlds, characters and scenarios that couldn't possibly exist and yet still make them believable stories which people want to read because there's just enough grain of reality to let a reader fit herself/himself in and get lost in a wonderful plot? For me the answer has been one thing: my humanity.

Realisitcally, whether your character is human or an immortal who sprouts fur and fangs on the full moon, in the present or on the nineteenth-century craggy moors of England, people are people. We all know what it has meant to suffer, to feel loneliness, to experience the joy of friendship and love, the steamy excitement of sexuality and all the things that go with that intense part of life. The key is allowing yourself to feel it fully inside you and then translate it into the story.

There are times when, if I'm not letting these feelings flow inside me, I feel a bit stuck and need to step back and really put myself into a character's place. For example, in my current WIP, an m/m contemporary that takes place in Tokyo, I open the story with a young man who's making a risky, desperate attempt to escape his sadistic yakuza lover by grinding up sleeping pills in a glass and slipping them into the man's sake so he can then climb out the balcony and go running practically naked into the night. I'm a 38 year old Jewish woman living in South Florida who barely speaks a word of Japanese and has never been to Tokyo. I admit that I'm putting in a tall order here in terms of presenting a believable scenario. (And I'm not bragging that I'll pull it off perfectly). However, as I was writing the scene, I was putting myself in this young man's place and asking myself, what is he feeling right now? What must this be like for him and what have I felt in my life that comes close? Being harrassed on a train in Finland as a teenager by a drunk guy who didn't speak a word of English? For me, terrified. Yes, I can write terrified. And I can write the physcial symptoms of terror. Racing heart. Sweating palms. Burning cheeks. What's more, this character had gotten involved with the yakuza because he thought this older man would give him an exciting life, a luxurious life and now, he's regretting his choice and wanting to make amends. He regrets his foolishness and arrogance. Another emotional state that I have experienced personally and can express if I take the time to find the proper words. These layers make for interesting, believable characters who are complex and loveable even with their flaws. In each scene I write, I go through this process, translating my life experiences to the characters in these ways.

Sometimes the scenarios are a little more directly from personal experience. Like being walked in on by someone when you're making out...or more. You get my point. Emotions and actual physical scenarios are written in to my books in varying degrees. Sometimes I need to do major tweaking because of what I'm trying to accomplish, and sometimes I can be closer to the knitting.

Now, the question that I'm asked once in a while. Have you experienced the things you're writing about? (The sex stuff, that is.) The answer is yes! And No! *Another shy giggle* Like I said earlier, there are varying degrees. But frankly, as a female, I'm not going to be able to experience sensuality as a man with another man. I must use some imagination with a lot of "people are people". Sometimes I'm successful and sometimes I get told my m/m stuff is too "ladylike". Thank goodness there are plenty of readers who don't mind a little "ladylike" m/m. *Laughs*

In any case, I hope this is helpful. As far as translating what I'm saying to advice, I would say that there's a balance. It's wonderful to exercise the imagination, to delve into the paranormal world or back into history, or far into the future for plotlines of stories. It's also wonderful to stretch a bit as far as what the characters go through. But one thing remains the same: people. The human heart is the human heart where ever you go. And that's a really good thing. Thank you very much.