Borrowing characters from real life

Ruby, a much-loved service dog

When my daughter was ten or eleven, she used to say from time to time, “Mom, write a book about me. You could call it Heavens to Elisabeth.”

“Beth-Alison,” I’d say, “I can’t write a book about you. I don’t know you well enough.”

“Oh, Mom,” she’d say, in utter disgust, and that was the end of the discussion.

But the truth is I didn’t know her well enough to use her as the perceiving character in one of my stories—and still don’t—though I know her about as well as mos...