Family in Fiction: How Real Lives Shaped The Mayor

When I began writing The Mayor: A Big Tex Novel, I wasn’t just building a fictional world—I was drawing from the roots of my own. Though the plot is fictional, the people within it were shaped by real-life voices, temperaments, and lived experiences. That connection brought authenticity and emotional depth to every scene.

Gregory “Big Tex” Thomas, the young and principled Mayor of Dallas, is a reflection of many admirable qualities I’ve witnessed in the leaders around me—family, mentors, and peers. His sense of duty, moral conflict, and private sacrifices echo the emotional complexity of real leadership, and writing his journey allowed me to reflect on my own growth and the burden of expectations.

Keisha, Corrina, Brandon, Miss Rutha, aka Granny and so many others in the novel are not characters I pulled from the air—they were drawn from the essence of people I know and love. Their personalities, values, strengths, and even their flaws were inspired by real friends and family who have shaped my life in powerful, sometimes quiet, ways.

Brandon Thomas, Greg’s brother and Chief of Staff, really Brandon Bell, is built on the foundation of brotherhood I’ve known in my own life—loyal, driven, and unshakably grounded. Writing him came naturally because I’ve been blessed with real men in my life who show up like that every day.

Miss Rutha, Greg’s grandmother, is pure heart and heritage. Her spirit, discipline, and wisdom mirror the matriarchs in my family—women whose words stayed with you long after they left the room. She wasn’t created. She was remembered.

Corrina, the Executive Assistant with a quiet strength and a complicated heart, wasn’t born out of fantasy. She was shaped by women I’ve worked alongside—brilliant, patient, ambitious women whose presence elevates a room and whose grace often goes unnoticed.

The truth is, writing from real life gave these characters soul. It made them believable—not because they were perfect, but because they were human. And for me, character development became less about constructing people from scratch, and more about honoring the people I’ve known.

What made this process so rewarding was being able to write from a place of sincerity. I didn’t have to guess how these characters would respond to love, pain, ambition, or betrayal—I’ve seen it firsthand in the people who have walked beside me through seasons of my own journey. And while the details may be fictional, the emotional truth behind them is real.

It also meant that The Mayor is more than a novel to me—it’s a tribute. A quiet thank-you to the people who shaped my worldview, who modeled integrity, who loved me into my calling. The story may entertain, but at its heart, it’s about legacy—and I owe mine to those who never asked for credit, but gave everything they had to ensure I would thrive.

So yes, the book is fictional. But the love, loyalty, and leadership on those pages? That’s as real as it gets.

To my family and friends—you are the heartbeat of this book. Thank you for giving me the kind of character inspiration that no imagination could ever invent.