Meeting Kimi

I recently re-edited and republished the six Aspen Grove romance anthologies. I loved re-reading all of them since I have always loved the series. I especially enjoyed Directions of Love, the winner of the 2011 EPIC eBook Award. My novella in this one contains a great deal of our personal characteristics and family stories.

I was reminded of a very special event related to this book.

In November of 2010, we were on vacation with friends in Hawaii. We decided to do some sightseeing, and one day, we went to Queen Emma’s Summer Palace. It was close to Honolulu, and our friends had never seen it. (BTW, it is a lovely way to spend a day on Oahu.)

It was a slow day, and we were the only tourists there. Each couple was assigned a different docent for the home tour. Our friends went first since we wanted to make sure they saw everything.

Then our docent appeared. She took my breath away.

At the time, I was working with the editor on the final changes to the manuscript for Directions of Love just prior to publication. I took my computer on vacation with me specifically so I could complete the book.

This young lady was the personification of the protagonist in my novella, “Finding Love in Paradise.” Kimi McGuire was half Irish and half Hawaiian. She was raised in our fictional town of Aspen Grove, Colorado, but went to Hawaii to attend college at the University of Hawaii.

After staring at her for a while, I finally apologized and told her about Kimi. I had described her as tiny with long straight, dark hair, dark eyes, and fair skin. There she stood in front of me.

After I described my character and we began to talk, the similarities became even more striking.

Our docent shared Kimi’s ethnicity: Irish and Hawaiian. They both attended UH at Manoa, and both studied anthropology. Kimi worked at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and our docent volunteered at the Queen Emma Summer Palace while attending college. Both were interested in their own Hawaiian heritage.

I don’t remember much about the tour, but our conversation with our docent remains vivid.

I wrote down her name somewhere. (I lost it shortly thereafter.) I gave her one of our author cards and wrote the name of the book on the back. I asked her to email us so I could let her know when the book was published. I never heard back from her.

I often base my characters’ appearance on other people: friends, movie and TV stars, etc. This was the only time I wrote a fictional character and then met the personification of the character in person.

I really wish she had contacted me or that I remembered her name. (It was unusual.) But I’ll never forget this lovely young lady.