Do I have to explain Tuckerization? Probably not to this crowd, but I’ll do it anyway. It’s when you put a real person in as a character in one of your stories/books. Popularized by the late Wilson  “Bob” Tucker who made a habit of it. While there are all kinds of legal implications for doing such a thing of your own accord (like revealing a real embarrassment about a real person in terms so thin anyone could figure out who you meant), it’s usually just for fun and with everyone’s cooperation. Charities will even raise money on the chance to be immortalized by being killed horribly in, say, a Stephen King novel.

In all my time making up stories I’ve never felt the need to do one, because that’s not the way I work.  All my characters emerge from whole cloth. And by “whole cloth” I mean they’re amalgams of my own inner landscape plus bits drawn from  everyone I’ve ever met in this life.

That is, until now.

I’ve spoken about the local flash fiction group I belong to. Every week (almost) I have to come up with a piece of flash in addition to whatever else I may be working on. Lots of stand alones, but one or two have turned into new series. One of those is about a pub called “The Black Dog,” a place which is sometimes there and sometimes not, with a rather…different, shall we say, clientele, aside from the normal humans who through fate or good (or bad) luck stumble across it. They’ve been fun to write and I’ll likely turn them into a collection when I have enough. Regardless, our group leader likes them so much she asked to be made into a character in one of the stories. I was so astonished at the idea that someone wanted to be in a story of mine that I agreed.

So next week I’ll be keeping my promise, in a character who literally doesn’t exist in a pub that sometimes exists. Writing is always hard work, but it’s fun, too.

Sometimes I can use that reminder.