'Cass' Cassidy emerged gradually over a long period of time.  I have two sons, both are musicians and are in bands that write their own music.  Just as writing a a great book doesn't mean it will be published, a band could produce a great song, but it doesn't make them instantly famous or the song will be the next big hit.  Those are the things that we, as authors or musicians, already know.

I have always tried to help my boys to follow their dreams and I am proud of both.  It takes a lot of money, time and effort to create, produce and perform music, and I have gone without better cars, that new cooker, or the little luxuries in life to be able to get the guitars, strings and equipment they needed.  I'll never regret it because it' s too easy to become bogged down in 'real life' and never get the chance to realise those dreams.  Neither of them have 'made it' yet, but we still have hope and they are still out there performing and loving it.  But it got me thinking about the what-ifs.

So Cass was born as a character because I was fed up with being told they both needed to get 'proper jobs' and get out there earning the money playing music would never get them.    Dreams don't earn money.   In Eliza's Song, Cass fell out with his father as a teenager for that very same reason, but twenty years on he is the singer in one of the biggest rock bands out there.  He made it big and he made his millions.  Okay, so he loses it all one dark night when the band's tour bus is in collision with a lorry on the motorway, and everything he loves is snatched away from him, but he'd 'made it'.  He had proved everyone wrong.

Of course, that doesn't mean every teenager with a guitar and a band is going to do the same, but sometimes they do.  Sometimes dreams come true.

Cass has to learn what life is like when he no longer wants to play a guitar or sing the songs that he loves.   I hope that never happens to my boys.   Their lives revolve around music, just like Cass.   But that's a good thing, right?