Drive 3.4 miles and jump off a cliff

A few people have asked if our characters are based on anyone from our real lives. While I think any writing endeavor leads to some overlap, for the most part we’re making these characters up from whole cloth with just a few quirks added from ourselves or our friends. (Some people would call this “lazy,” but I call it “efficient”)

There’s one notable exception to this rule, though – one character that’s absolutely based on a real entity. It’s Mags, the haunted GPS.

A little background might be in order: A few years ago, my job involved quite a lot of local travel. I had 11 locations throughout the Chicago suburbs that I was responsible for, and they were spread out enough that I often didn’t know the best route between them off the top of my head. To keep myself from going insane, I bought a GPS unit for my car, programmed it with all of those locations and used it pretty extensively until I knew the lay of the land. I was pleased to note that the model I bought offers two accents: “American” and “English”. Being who I am, I felt like it would be more amusing to have the machine talking to me with a bad, robotic English accent, so that’s the one I selected. Overall I was quite pleased with the thing.

One thing I noticed about the GPS, though. It’s a fickle, fickle piece of technology. When I go off-route, it seems to get annoyed and will take an inordinate amount of time before it deigns to tell me how to get back on the right path. And if I ask it to find me a bowling alley or a miniature golf course? Well, that’s an exercise in futility. I’ve been sent to bars, vacant buildings, miniature golf courses that closed 5 years ago, and most notably the middle of a corn field while in search of these plebian entertainments.

Obviously, my GPS unit is possessed by a snooty English ghost.

So, too, is Alex’s. Her given name is Lady Margaret something or other, but we just call her Mags. As our story develops, she begins to take on more and more personality, and eventually will move beyond “technological foil” and into a character in her own right. She has her own motivations, and a bit of a jealous streak as well.

Mostly, though, Mags provides an opportunity for River to abuse me verbally. For some reason she enjoys saying things like, “Turn left and drive 300 miles…you idiot.”