11: How important are parents to your stories?
For all my ongoing novels right now, they are very important. These are slice of life stories, and whether their parents are living or dead, in their lives or not, I think parents have a huge effect on who we become and the lives that we lead. For both my male and female leads in all three of my novels, they've had an impact on their mental states in both big and small ways.
Alicia's mother is the source of a lot of guilt. Her parents' divorce is the whole reason she met Kattar in the first place, and there are a thousand other parts of her life that are continuously effected by the memory of her parents and are still affected by their actions as well.
Kattar's mother very intentionally crafted him into the person he is today, and the knowledge of that also has a huge effect on the way he sees himself, not to mention all the trauma that comes from knowing she went out of her way to avoid telling him what his dad was like, who he never met.
Leia and Riley's parents (from "Rigamarole") are honestly one of the biggest threats of their whole lives because they know if their secrets are ever found out they will cease to be treated like people, and become case studies to be picked apart and "fixed." For that reason they feel they have to do everything in their power to keep their parents from finding out.
(A bit about Alicia's parents, mostly her mother.)
