Who Is Sweetie-Pie?

I’m often asked which people around me are the inspiration for certain characters in my books.  For the most part, the truth is, no one.  Everyone inspires me but not in the way you might think.  I am a great observer of people, body language, and human behavior.  It is from this well of observation that I draw, and it is from this same well that I build my characters, but this well pretty much encompasses the whole darn world.  My characters are not based on anyone I know, or anyone I have ever encountered before.  Rather, my characters are what I make them, drawing from a generalized pool of knowledge and information.  With one exception….

Sweetie Pie.

No, no, I’m not calling you Sweetie-Pie.  For those of you who have read Blackwater, you already know that Sweetie-Pie is a horse.  Sweetie-Pie is a character just like any other character in Blackwater, but with a kick…er…no pun intended.  I won’t give away any of the details.  I prefer that my readers have a pure, untarnished read, because Blackwater is one hellofa fun book to read.  Well…for awhile, anyway.

Unlike all my other fictional characters, Sweetie Pie was inspired by a living, breathing horse.  For the sake of this blog, I will call this real, live horse Honey.  Honey was owned by my crazy cousin.  When I was fifteen, the family moved to my grandfather’s 84 acre farm.  This was fabulous for me, because it meant that I finally had a pasture, and having a pasture meant I could keep a horse.  My crazy cousin was happy to loan me his hunting horse.  Honey was truly inspirational in every way.  You see, Honey, just like Sweetie-Pie, hated men.  All men, without exception, including my crazy cousin.  In fact, Honey was so un-honey-like toward men that my crazy cousin only dragged Honey out of the pasture during hunting season.  For this brief time in the middle of the year, Honey would allow my cousin to ride him.  The rest of the time, forget it.

Also, just like Sweetie-Pie, Honey was transported in the back of a utility-sided pickup truck. (Believe me, it’s a strange site to behold.)  Now, for me, Honey was as sweet as could be.  I’m female.  Honey loved women.  I could ride Honey as often as I liked.  Being twenty miles from everywhere, out in the woods, with no neighbors close by, there wasn’t much else to do, so Honey was used often.  Honey was also pampered a lot, which really annoyed my crazy cousin.

“You made him fat,” he once told me.

“He looks good,” I replied.

Anyway, Honey was well taken care of.  After every ride, I brushed him down thoroughly.  He even got regular baths.  He looked as sparkly good as all those thoroughbred relatives of his.  But Honey had some quirks about him.  For example, he liked to stand on my feet whenever the opportunity arose.  Now…being a hick…I was always barefoot in those days.  So, having a thoroughbred, which is a rather large horse, standing on your foot was incredibly painful.  And I know he did this on purpose.  Every time I got anywhere near his neck when I was brushing him, he would sidestep and put his big honking hoof right square in the center of my foot.  And he wouldn’t move until he got damn good and ready.  I could pull his mane, push his nose, shove on his shoulder, rock him back and forth like a cradle, yell, scream, tug on his ear, stick my fingers under his lip and try to pull him off me, but nothing worked.  He stood on my foot until he was ready to move.  The amount of pain I endured that first summer was phenomenal.  As much as I tried to avoid being stepped on, Honey tried harder to do the stepping.  God, it hurt like hell!!

Even worse, when Honey did decide to move, it always brought a yowl of pain from me that flushed the quail out of the nearby palmettos.  He didn’t just move his hoof.  He scraped it over the top of my foot.  For several years, I had half moon scars on the top of each foot where Honey had abraded the skin by standing and scraping, standing and scraping.  Still, I loved the old booger.  And I sure miss him now.

So…Sweetie Pie is the only character inspired by someone I knew.  A horse.

Copyright 2008  C. D. Blizzard  

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