In my previous post, I pointed out that Lucy Ricardo was born of myth & suggested I, too, came from that communal pool of creative energy. Well, as discerning readers have no doubt guessed, those delicious depths are also where I found Katie O\u2019Toole, which, in a weird way, sort of makes her Lucy Ricardo\u2019s granddaughter. Many readers have noted the strong family resemblance between Katie & me. We are both humans. We are both females. And, yes, like Lucy, we both have red hair, white skin, & blue eyes. So the question inevitably arises: is Katie O\u2019Toole me?<\/p>\n
Um, not really. I mean, sure, sort of, but the truth is, I was very reluctant to write a book about a character who shares my complexion, my gender, my species, because I was afraid readers would dismiss her as just another pathetic author\u2019s ego-trip. But in the end, what choice did I have? How could I pass up the chance to create a character who physically personifies the good old red, white & blue?<\/p>\n
Because that\u2019s who Katie O\u2019Toole really is, you know\u2014the original modern American. She was born here of parents not born here, thus representing the 1st generation of European immigrants who called this continent home. For her, the Old Country was little more than a myth, the primordial ooze from which she crawled, but North America was very real, it was where she lived her life, & it was neither the Old World nor the New World, but her<\/em> world. In other words, Katie represents the 1st of a new breed of Native Americans.<\/p>\n But if Katie is a Native American, then what does that make the Native Americans who were already here? And if Katie is the original red, white & blue, then doesn\u2019t that sort of make her Lucy Ricardo\u2019s great-grandmother? Wow, this is getting weird. Let\u2019s just say Katie O\u2019Toole is a figment of our collective imaginations & let it go at that.<\/p>\n But wait. Doesn\u2019t that sort of mean Katie O\u2019Toole is you<\/em>?\u00a0Now that really is<\/em> weird . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In my previous post, I pointed out that Lucy Ricardo was born of myth & suggested I, too, came from that communal pool of creative energy. Well, as discerning readers have no doubt guessed, those delicious depths are also where I found Katie O\u2019Toole, which, in a weird way, sort of makes her Lucy Ricardo\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":199,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions\/199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}