Cameos

Do any of you ever insert friends and family in your book in cameos? Not as main characters, just in the background. I do it sometimes. I never include important figures, like politicans or movie stars or even people I know distantly, just my family or friends. I do it as a joke mostly. In Atlantis Reborn, I gave my best friend a soul mate which she found funny and liked very much. In some of my earlier books, I've included my younger sister in brief scenes and in Atlantis Reborn Oceanus and Tethys's relationship is based alot of my parents. I also like to include references to my favourite books and television shows. In a brief scene that included Selene, the goddess of the moon who was the inspiration for the Japanese cartoon character Sailor Moon, I gave her a crescent moon symbol on her forehead and silver hair, just like Sailor Moon. She was only in the book for about five seconds and the similiarties will be almost impossible to notice since I don't actually name the goddess as Selene. Anyone with knowlege of the myths would recognize it as her when she "descends from the moon in a carriage drawn by flying horses" though.


So what about the rest of you? What little touches of your own personality and family life do you put in your book just for kicks?

I used the name of a particuarly evil ex-boss of mine who used to tormet me daily into one of my books once. I made him an evil pawn who was killed rather brutally. Muwahhahhaaaaa. That book has since tanked.