Real life/real fiction

People sometimes ask how real the books are write are, meaning I guess whether the things that are described in them really happened. I usually have a lot of trouble answering because there are always many real things in the book, and it’s hard to explain exactly where the line is sometimes.

In the First Team books, for example, the lead character – Bob Ferguson – is based on a real person. Obviously, he finds himself in somewhat different situations, and this is a work of fiction, not reality. But when I’m working on the book, I see Ferg – the real Ferg – in my head.

My memory of the real Ferg pretty much guides what the character does. There are plot necessities and the like, but his attitude toward life and the rest are spot on.

Or at least I think they are.

I don’t know if that information is useful at all to the reader. Larry Bond and I once had a semi-long discussion on the relationship between real and not real characters. His take, if I’m remembering it right, was that he really didn’t want to know. He preferred to think it was all made up – it was almost as if that made the spell we fall under when we read a good yarn that much better.

And in a way, of course, the characters in novels are all made up, even Ferg. The real person is not the fictional character, no matter how close the resemblance. The novelist has to remain completely in control of the fiction, something that never happens in real life. (Especially where Ferg was concerned.) There are always differences, no matter how tightly drawn the character is, points where reality fades and fiction takes over.

The real Ferg, for example, didn’t have cancer. (That part of the character comes from someone else, actually.) And I don’t think the real Ferg could dance as well as the fictional character can, though I can't quite recall ever seeing him dance.

Same guy, though. Plop the real Ferg down in Bologna, have him target a sniper who’s actually targeting him – basically everything that happens in Soul of the Assassin would happen in real life.

Well . . . I suspect the real Ferg would have figured out what was going on by the second chapter, ending the book far too soon . . .

Larry's right - better to think of it as all made up.