January 2019: Fact in Fiction
~ Helen Henderson ~
CTR asked:
How much of your real life bleeds over into your books? And do you worry that someone will be able to tell the fact from the fiction?
Helen Henderson said:
When I first saw the topic it was three words, “”Fact in Fiction.”” So I wrote a post on the role of fact in fiction. If a story is based on a real site in the contemporary world, details need to be accurate. Readers will know if something is wrong. A small detail of a town being on the wrong side of a river or a street facing west rather than north can throw a reader out of the story. Historical fiction requires facts to keep the setting and characters true to the time period.
Then when I went to key in the post, I saw the full prompt “How much of your real life bleeds over into your books?” and out came the delete key.
In some ways, I think every author leaves a little of themselves on the page. It might be an unconscious leakage of a childhood memory appearing in the hero’s past or places we’ve been that became settings in our books.
I want to start off saying that I would love to say that I’ve been to my heart home, Scotland and Ireland. But I haven’t. Nor have I been to the Australian outback that inspired the land in which much of Windmaster Legacy took place. I spent a short time during my childhood overseas, so that experience helps when I write a setting based on a tropical island such as the one Lady Ellspeth visited in Windmaster or Anastasia did in Dragon Destiny. But those were more exceptions than me having visited or lived in the worlds I create There is one aspect of my real life that occurs in my worlds–the mountains.
Another interpretation of the prompt relates to me as my characters. Am I my characters? Nope! I haven’t traveled in outer space or hunted treasures like Indiana Jones. Only in my imagination did I help Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo save the world. I won’t admit which of the hunky men from U.N.C.L.E. was my favorite. But now you can see why adventure and action must be in my stories as well as the romance.
Some authors create characters that are mirror images of themselves. Either as they are in real life or who they want to be. I firmly state – that contrary to some comments, I’m not my characters. And from some of the things that have happened to them, I don’t think I want to be.
Although, I do occasionally dream being about to take on dragon form or wield magic. Or travel to foreign lands such as the Australian Outback or my heart home of Ireland and Scotland.
– Website – https://helenhenderson-author.blogspot.com/
– Twitter – @history2write
Dragon Destiny (The Dragshi Chronicles, Book 1)
[Fantasy Dragon Shifter Romance, MF]
Branin is the last dragon shifter born in over three hundred years. As a dragshi, he can take the form of his dragon soul twin, Llewlyn and knows the freedom of flight, but not happiness. Both are the last of their kind and have waited millennia for their mates.
When a faint thought impinged on Branin’s mind, hope for an ending to eons of loneliness soared. Plagued by doubts because no signs of a dragon shifter’s birth have been seen, he searches the world for the mysterious girl he only knows by the name, Anastasia.
However, the firebrand raider, Lady Broch of Ky’port has her own plan–to wed the dragon lord — with or without his willing cooperation. And she will not tolerate anyone, not even a dragon lord or his twinned soul, from standing in her way.
Available in Ebook:
More Authors Dish about their facts in fiction.
https://coffeethoughts.coffeetimeromance.com/ad2019-jan-facts/
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