"GRAMPA FRANK!"

It is a fatal mistake for a reader to think that a story is about the writer, or that the writer is in the story somewhere. Or, to look for a character in a story that might be a window into the writer's life, psyche, or personality. Writers would tell you that this is preposterous. It would be like watching a Mickey Mouse cartoon and trying to learn about Walter Disney. The two are mutually exclusive. It is part of the creative talent of a writer to be able to create characters and situations. Even if it has to be their lives, plus their imaginations that lead to the work. It is the talent of the writer that makes these characters, events, and situations seem real to whatever degree they seem so. The greater the talent, the more real the people, events, and places in a story seem..

Thinking a character is the author makes a terrible and faulty leap. To make this kind of assumption is dangerous. Some people, naive and or ignorant about the creative process think that a writer must live a part to write it. Again, this is preposterous. And in actual fact, a denial of the writer's creative talent and his or her imagination...

Ernest Hemingway was not The Old Man In The Sea. Herman Melville was not a whale. Albert Payson Terhune was not a collie dog. The writer of Black Beauty was not a horse.

In reading a writer, I suggest you enjoy the stories for what they are... just stories, however good or bad or fair-to-middlin'..., representing the execution of various creative challenges and creative risks taken by the writer.