Suffering For Your Characters

I spend most of my life in pain from one problem or another, mainly brought on by years of ignoring medical advice.

Now there’s a novelty: someone with health problems NOT blaming it on other people.

Unusual or not, it’s the truth. If I’d taken better care of myself when I was younger, I wouldn’t have most of the problems I have right now: arthritis, COPD, type 2 diabetes, being the three major culprits.

Right now, I have some muscle problems with my back. I’ve been in chronic pain since Wednesday afternoon, and matter reached a head in the early hours of Friday morning when I had to see the emergency doctor. We’re gonna start looking into it this coming week. In the meantime, the missus and I spent the day in Blackpool yesterday, and it was pure agony.

I always believed that pain is the body’s way of telling you you’re still alive, but yesterday, it was extreme, and I felt like saying, “Okay, I’ve got the message.”

As a novelist, however, there is a plus side to this. I can make my characters suffer the same problems.

I’m a boomer (born between 1964 and 1970) Joe, Sheila and Brenda and most of the STAC gang are boomers. It would be strange if they didn’t suffer the same trouble as me, although, aside from Sylvia Goodson’s diabetes, and Sheila’s gallstones, it’s never been addressed… yet.

In the near future Joe is gonna start feeling the pinch of too many cigarettes, too many late nights and early mornings, and not enough rest. And he’s gonna find out the same way I did, by suffering a suspected heart attack.

The only difference is, Joe is more intelligent than me. He’ll listen to medical advice (eventually) and he has two people at his side who will make him do as his told. My missus has tried to make me do as I’m told, but it didn’t work. Not because the missus isn’t forceful enough, but because I’m too stupid to listen.

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The Chocolate Egg Murders, STAC Mystery #7, is available as an ebook from Amazon (Kindle), Smashwords (all formats) and direct from Crooked Cat Books (MOBI, EPUB, PDF) and in paperback from Amazon.