The other day, somebody asked me, “Wes, you are exactly like Mike in your robot books. Is your wife anything like Patience?” My answer was “My wife is pretty damned patient, but she’s no Daffodil.”
Mike is a lot like me, but I would say not 100%– 75 to 80% tops. Still, many of the little stories and events in the books are taken from life. In His Robot Wife, Harriet (Mike’s daughter) mentions the time that her father scared the crap out of a kid trying to bully her at the risk of getting fired. Yup, that’s right from my life.
There’s a tidbit in the book where Jack (Harriet’s husband) is cleaning the puke out of his car because a neighbor he was trying to help vomited and caused a chain reaction. This story comes from real life– thankfully not mine. My brother-in-law experienced this. His wife, like mine (they’re sisters) is always getting him to do something for people he hardly knows, and unlike me, he’s too nice to say no. He ended up having to clean vomit from three or four other people out of his car.
In the new book, so far, there are fewer little tidbits from my own life, although I am channeling a few cruise vacations as Mike and Patience go on theirs.