People are people, messy and mutable, combining differently with one another from day to day - even hour to hour.

But in fantasy, you can make a complete break, and you can put people in a situation where they are confronted with things that they would not confront in the real world.

Other people, including me, have written books with main characters who were old and rich. Or old and brilliant. Old sages, old wizards, old rich people.

Now my mother, interestingly enough, was not a feminist in her own mind.

You can also make explicit certain social problems which, again, would be prejudged or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses against it. Fantasy allows you to get past defenses.

What it boils down to is that parenting a child with autism is a difficult job; writing about it is far easier.

I used to not back down from a challenge.