Coming up with my characters in Let My Life Be Proof

I wish I could say that I had a wonderful dream that brought my characters to me, but I would be lying. The characters for all my books have been in my head for a long time and now that I have some time I am writing them down.  I think my parents equated it with me being a daydreamer or off in a world of my own and they were right.
My life changing, that's dramatic but it was a light bulb moment, happened when I was watching Merv Griffen.  I know now everyone knows I'm old.  He was the original Ellen.  He had Kirstie Alley on because she was a female Spock in the original Star Trek movie.  Now there is no hiding it, I'm old.  :)  Anyway she said that when she was little she would insert herself into movies and television shows, as a new character.  I sat there and thought, WOW!  I thought I was the only one that did that.  So now that someone else said it was okay to develop my own little story lines I went wild.  In my stories I've starred in Charlies Angels, The Outsiders, The Walking Dead, just to name a few. All my stories stem from something I saw at one time and then developed in my head.  LET MY LIFE BE PROOF began after I watched The Big Red One, then added more when I saw Blackhawk Down, then regenerated it again after I saw Act of Valor and read the Marcu Lutrell story.  I had an entire story line in each of those movies starring ME!  Well I couldn't write those stories because someone else already had...so I began to research the war in Afghanistan and took my character and added her in there to get ta! da! my story.