The Many Layers of Lorene: How & Why She Came to Be

Lorene Stewart feels a lot like a best friend to me. She’s wise, fun, loyal, a good listener, and faithful, even as she struggles through life’s difficulties. She’s funny, too. A country girl dreaming of all the future might hold, she also loves music, riding horses, ice skating, and hanging out with her family and friends. The difficulty in our friendship is that…well, we live in different decades. Lorene is about 60 years older than me; age 17 in the early 40s. Oh, and also—she’s fictional.

That’s right. I’m one of those crazy authors who thinks of her character as a real person. (Ask your favorite authors and you’ll see I’m not alone!) After spending the better part of the last seven years writing four books featuring Lorene, then editing and editing some more, I know her just about as well as I know myself. It helps that I’m her creator, I suppose, haha. (God surely must feel similarly when he looks down at each of us!)

Lorene Stewart is the main character of my novel, A Mess of Dreams (releasing July 14, 2026), which is a WW2 home front novel set in my small hometown of Potomac, Illinois. Spending time with her is one of my favorite things to do (which means eventually The Middlefork Series could grow beyond the planned four books in length)!

But how did Lorene come about? And why?

Lorene’s character was first inspired by Grandma Judy, my dad’s mom. After my grandma passed in 2018, I was left reflecting on what an incredible life this woman had lived, although she’d probably claim there was nothing special about it. The truth is, she lived through multiple hugely impactful events which changed the course of her life forever. The kind of things that would have broken a lesser woman.

I decided Grandma Judy needed to be remembered; not only by her friends and family. She needed to keep inspiring people, even after her death. And so…

Enter Lorene.

While the character of Lorene was first inspired by my grandma, the woman that became front and center of my book series eventually grew more layered. As a writer, pieces of myself are bound to show up in my characters, and that certainly happened with Lorene. Not that I was conscious of it as I wrote. But as she developed as a character, I observed conversations she shared with friends and family (yes, that I wrote) and began to see pieces of me here and there. In her banter, in her worries, in her faith. Much of her felt very familiar.

Not only do I see my grandma and myself in Lorene, there are times I may glimpse my own mother, my sister, or a friend. Sometimes she is her own person, not to be compared to anyone else.

And that’s where the beauty lies. When I can no longer point to my main character and make a direct comparison to someone else…when she has taken on a life of her own; a personality of her own. Then I know she is who she was always meant to be: Lorene. A fictional character meant to walk through life with and understand us—the readers. To lead us in empathy, inspire us in faith, and be an example in friendship. All the while helping us escape from the demands of this world for just a few hours.

My prayer is that once readers finish spending time with Lorene, they’ll know themselves better than before. They will have examined parts of themselves they hadn’t thought to observe before. And just maybe, their perspective on people, life, and God will have broadened just a little, and they’ll close the book with a smile on their face, feeling just a bit more emboldened toward their own futures.

If nothing else, I pray Lorene’s journey takes her dear readers to another place and time, if only for a while, and leaves them feeling refreshed and hopeful.

That’s not too much to ask of a fictional character, is it?? ;)

My grandma would likely be shocked, and hopefully thrilled, to know she inspired such a character. I sure hope you’ll introduce yourself to Lorene through A Mess of Dreams. She adores getting to know new people.