When my husband walks into the post office, Deb the postal clerk says, “So…who are you in COWBOYS NEVER CRY?”  Sometimes this idea that people think I’m writing thinly veiled memoir scares me – who do they think I am?  After publishing three novels, a schizophrenic is the only possible right answer! Readers often assume that fictional characters are really based on actual people.  It’s hard for those who don’t write to imagine a person could conjure a completely original character.  This is how it works with me: I never write about real people in my life, but I do write about real characteristics of people in my life. But try to tell that to Deb at the post office. I haven’t consciously written about myself, my life or the people in it in any of my novels.  Yet all those years of inappropriately thinking everything that occurred in the world had to do personally with me helps now that I’m writing.  Also, all that empathy I experienced earlier in my life, before learning how to hold psychic boundaries has given me insight into others.  That’s one nice thing about being a writer: even your failings are eventually useful. If…