By Ann Minnett

This is my husband, Mike. He laughs a lot and was especially tickled when this picture was taken. He’s more apt to laugh out loud than to smirk, sigh, cry, yawn, or gasp. So yesterday when we were watching TV, knitting (me), and reading (Mike), I didn’t think too much about Mike laughing out loud.

But then he gasped. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, saying, “Do I even know you?” He was reading the first chapter of my new novel and speaking to me.

“What do you mean?”

He ruffled the pages. “Sometimes I think that you spend all your time in a distant place with people I don’t even know.”

“Why, yes I do.” My crazy characters reveal themselves to me long before they make it to the page.

I can’t tell you how it pleased me to surprise him, although I almost never set out to do so.