Shh...It's a Secret

I have a secret.

No one's seen it yet, but eventually it will come out. It won't be noticeable, unless you pay attention and read the books I write.

I've no problem sharing my secret and aside from one other person, you will be the first to hear it.

For reasons that I haven't begun to understand yet, there is always a yellow chair in my books/series. There's nothing special about this chair, it changes every time depending on the characters and situation. It morphs to suit the needs of the character who owns the chair. It's indiscriminate, both males & females own it. A constant is that it is always there and it is always some mustard yellow color that the character can't decide why they like. Usually they don't. However, the chair always means something.

I'd like to take this opportunity to share some of the marked differences:

In a few weeks, my Sci-Fi romance, Midnight's Ghost, will be released with Liquid Silver Books.

The ugly, didn’t-match-anything yellow fabric stitched to the chair’s metal support system had been through a hell of a lot with me and even though Midnight's Star had gone down in flames, I hadn’t been able to let the chair go. Luckily it had been easily salvaged from the wreckage after I recovered from my injuries and the chair was installed on Eidolon after Dad had been killed and the ship was left to me. It still bore the scars of the Midnight's Star crash as I wasn’t about to repair them. They were like badges of honor to me. A display of the life I had once lived, the mistakes I had made because I had been young and impetuous.

While my first release, Flash of Dark, doesn't have such a chair, it's only because the chair in that series wasn't meant for those characters. Instead it is characters the reader will meet in the second book of that series, Blood Fever, due out this summer.

The oddly shaded yellow color of the upholstery did nothing to enhance the woman sitting in the chair, but the bright beams of moonlight set her aglow. Then again the chair would stick out like a sore thumb with any décor. It was ugly and pitiful with its dark curve of antique wood leg. He’d never taken the time to throw it out because it wasn’t a priority. Now he was glad he hadn’t.

And most recently, in the story I just complete the first draft on.

Satisfied with her position, he moved away to lower himself into his favored chair several feet away from her. This room had always been about indulgences and this chair was certainly no exception. That indulgence was why he kept the piece of furniture down here instead of up in his loft. Besides, it didn’t fit his living arrangements upstairs and wasn’t even comfortable – at least for extended periods. The color didn’t even match anything else in the room, aside from the sunny yellow throw pillows of the same shade on the couch across the room.

Is it because I can't think of anything else? No, of course not. Is there some different meaning that I secretly harbor some desire to own a yellow chair? Nope. There is no deep dark meaning. It's simply mine.

But now I've shared it and now I have to find something else that's mine. ;^)

If you're a reader, is there some thing an particular author writes such as this that you find yourself liking (the first one for me that comes to mind is the button Roarke always keeps with him in the ...in Death series of books)? If you're a writer, is there something like this that you find yourself developing? It doesn't have to have some deep meaning, just something that's fun and adds a touch of you to each story you create.