Remember, if you don't feel passionate about the characters and subject of your story, your readers won't either.
All of my characters are a little bit based on people I know in real life. You know when you do that you have to change the character a little bit in case your friend or your relative reads the book, because you don't want them to know you wrote about them... They might get mad.
I really liked drama and being in plays, so when I was playing a character onstage and I could act like somebody else, then I wasn't scared or nervous, but I didn't like meeting new people when I had to be myself. That was scary.
Strong female characters - even if they don't necessarily make the same decisions that we might - make such great narrative material, especially when there's an equally strong male character in the mix.
For each book, I do end up making a kind of playlist to fit the characters.
