Leah Devlin (The Woods Hole Mysteries, Chesapeake Tug Boat Murders) offers a wonderful array of thoughts about the visual inspirations for her character. There are a few to be found here on the Penmore website (Authors on Characters ) but many more on her own website. Here’s a recent entry she wrote Visualizing Characters, where she looks at the images that inspired her complex and interesting charatcers in Vital Spark.