LOL. An excellent interpretation of this article. I know Holmes would approve, as well.

Sounds like you've given home defense quite a bit of thought with a character that has many issues to balance. Thank you for sharing your experience.

Thank you for sharing your experience, Jim. You articulate that beautifully! And dogs definitely do help.

May your muse be generous!

Great tips, plus you gave me a great excuse to pick up a tin of chocolate.😊

In Pride's Children: PURGATORY, the first novel in my mainstream trilogy, a reclusive disabled author lives in a house on a hill in New Hampshire, with no close neighbors. When she goes on the talk show which starts the story in NYC, she knows her pseudonym will be exposed, and fans will know who she really is - thinks at the time it's worth it in exchange for national exposure about the disease which has robbed her of energy and a normal life.

No good deed goes unpunished: a fan tracks her down, thinking she has defamed him because of what he sees of himself in her stories, and tries to break into her house 'to talk to her.'

As a former physician, she wonders if she'll be able to use the sharp knives in her kitchen in self-defense - if he gets close. 'Do no harm' is a strong deterrent.

Anyway, at the end of several tense scenes, she ends up agreeing to have a remote-controlled security gate installed at her narrow entrance - a gate which plays many parts in the rest of the story.

I worked hard on the logistics - like the way it turned out - and it had many chances to find out what our character was made of, including that she decided NOT to use the natural-cave panic room that came with the house, fearing her claustrophobia and the untested phone in it.

There are an enormous number of things I had to consider, all of which gave me ways to determine her physical courage, principles tested, and support systems in rural New Hampshire. In deep snow.