I don’t get “story inspiration.” I get “character inspiration.” And then those characters grow up, run off, have adventures, screw up, tell bad jokes, mature, make friends, tell more bad jokes, make enemies, figure out what they stand for, and come home to tell me all about it. And that’s where stories comes from.

Fluffy Bunnies Kicking Butts 

Megan’s and my rabbits have been inducted into my imaginary universe as human characters — and are now knights (with castles, swords, yes those knights).

Her 3 had real names and my 2 were named for geography elements (they were both white males and nobody was gonna be named Snowball, Snowflake, or Snow-anything on my watch!). As a challenge for me and tribute to them, I decided to keep their names and bunny fur color (as human hair color) and justify those things within the context of their tales (I love things like that; making weird stuff fit like it belongs).

Todley (black), Dublin (tan/white)

Vega

Tundra

Formerly a bundle of Netherlands dwarfs. Now human and saving the day in armor and on horseback. YES. (Their knightly adventures will definitely be making it onto paper but I don’t want to give anything away about those just yet.)

[Note: There’s no photo of my 2nd rabbit, Aspen, because he literally never stopped moving. EVER. None of my nieces or nephews wanted to hold him because – cuddle? Puh. Lame! Must run, EVERYWHERE! AHAHAHA!! He’s a blur in every picture except maybe one, but I don’t know where that one is right now. Or the ones of him as blurs. I’ll find ’em eventually.]

ALSO! If you’ve read Jolly Jailbreak then you’ve met the immortalized personality of the red beta fish I owned in middle school (Colin; he was friggin’ awesome… Now I want a beta fish).

Colin Story: He lived way longer than he was supposed to, grew huge, and was the only fish to share a tank with my brother’s slightly cannibalistic comrade-munching tetra (aka “Satan”; eat his fins? Yeah, Gigantor Colin didn’t put up with that crap.)

(Oddly I haven’t been able to do anything with our childhood dogs.)