Real people in my books

These cups belonged to my great aunt. I, who never played tea party or dolls,  somehow ended up with a cabinet full of her travel-treasures, many of them dishes and gravy boats and little painted tea pots. She died when I was six or seven, I think, so I don't have the stories to go with them. 


She had an automatic crank-up card shuffler, too, and cheated like crazy.  I loved her apartment in Denver, crowded with her collections, incense, furnished with expensive old stand-alone cabinets and divans with curved pecan wood feet. 


She was funny, adventurous, wry, elegant and nice to me. Really elegant, and really nice. This morning I wrote her into the third Resurrection of Magic book. It's a bit part, but I know she will like it.