Origins of Dred

Where do characters come from .... for me, it's usually a stew of things I've heard and people I've met. Mildred Hatcher (known by all as "Dred") came to me through a series of different things. After reading all of the Harry Potter books (I started reading them after the last one was released so I didn't have to wait in between). I was asking myself ... who is the "harry potter" of the story I want to tell next. Somewhere in there, the name came to me. After that I began to wonder what Dred's story was ... what did she have to tell the world?

Years ago, I was told about "ancestors" of two different friends of mine ... Aunt Annie, my friend Phyllis' maternal step-grandmother and the grandmother of a guy I knew way back when (at least 20+ years ago now). Aunt Annie was still single in her mid-thirties (back in the 1920's or 1930's) and wanted a family of her own. She had had some kind of a stroke when she was just 16 and that left her with some issues and I guess took her out of the "marriageable" women pool in the small town where she lived. Her parents left her their home when they died, but no real means of support. Sometime after her parents died, she met Phyllis' grandfather, who had been recently widowed and had (I believe) 4 young children, but no home and no way to care for the children. Aunt Annie proposed something of a deal, offering him and his children a home to live in and someone to mother the children, and she got a family out of the deal, including 2 children which were born to her in the next 4 or 5 years.

The situation with the ancestor of my other friend happened around WWI. The grandmother was a young woman living in Idaho. Her father was a reasonably well to do merchant there. During WWI she started writing to a soldier (unknown to her and I don't know how she got his information) who was fighting overseas (I believe in France). He came from the Chicago area and had been a semi-pro (or whatever it was called back then) baseball player. Apparently the early years of baseball included some heavy mob involvement and he had been unwilling to cooperate with them. His life was seriously threatened, which prompted him to join the military and get as far from Chicago as possible. Through their letters she came to know what his situation was and that he could not return to his family or Chicago. Her father had no sons and so the 3 of them worked out a deal where the 2 would marry, and the new son-in-law would take on her last name .... providing him a "son" to pass his business to .. and additional "cover" for him if the Mob came looking for him. They married on their first actual face-to-face meeting and spent the rest of their lives together.

These two stories have been swirling around in my head for years, and they attached bits and pieces of what I know onto Dred and giving rise to the premise for Minelanders.

Just thought you might enjoy that bit of information. :)