I’m often asked if I use any real life events in my writing. The answer: sometimes.
I’ve been writing for almost twenty years and of course something from life has to creep into my writing. Back when I started writing, everything from my life or the lives of family and friends went into stories. I wrote for Modern Romance and True Confessions; they wanted real life. Now don’t get me wrong: I know not everything is “real”. After ten years of writing for them, I’d ran out of true stories and began making them up.
Once I wrote a story about a woman who was in love with a drug addict. She wanted out of the relationship, but he was so controlling he’d rather kill her than let her leave. He handcuffed her to a radiator and started a chair on fire. My editors loved this story. Sadly, it was a true story that happened to a very good friend of mine. With her permission I wrote and published the story.
Not all true events will pass. Years ago I read a “too crazy to be true” article about a woman who grew tired of her husband’s nagging and shot him. The bullet lodged in his false teeth and he lived. I wrote a short story about it and my editor said, “This isn’t believable.” LOL Really?
When I published my first erotica book, Mistletoe Studs, I made the mistake of giving my heroine’s best friend the same name as my best friend. It really wasn’t supposed to stay Lisa. It was more of a place holder, but somehow I went through edits and forgot to change it. What a mistake that was.
After Lisa read the story she whined and asked why her character didn’t get to have sex.
Hmmm, it wasn’t about her!
This taught me a valuable lesson – leave out friends’ names and stop using real life events. Besides, when you escape into a book you want a fantasy, right?
Now when I write my erotic stories I stick with my fantasy what-ifs. If something from my life does happen to make it into a story I will cover it with so much fiction, no one will recognize it as being real.
From a very young age, Amber began making up stories--the only child syndrome. She grew up reading sick and twisted murder mysteries. Romance was for little kids and their fairy tales. One day her grandmother died and she inherited a boat load of romances and she found a new genre to love. Then she discovered erotic romance and found her calling. When not creating sexy, seductive stories Amber can be found at the ocean or floating around in her pool, with music blasting in the background. Her love of music inspires many of her stories.
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12 comments:
Hi Amber, welcome to the Naughty Nine. I'm currently sweating the fact that I named a prominent secondary character in my WIP after an old friend. She'll probably never read it. But still. LOL
LOL I'm sure you'll be fine. My friend is just a drama queen. :)
I just wrote and contracted a story about my best friends daughter who is a wedding planner, and very unlucky in love. She is a sweet, wonderful young lady so I decided to write her a mini-novelette for her bday last year. It was based on her life, loosely, and I did remember to change her name and she loved it! She told me to make sure to give her a HEA, I did and a year later, I submitted it and received a contract for it just yesterday!
I used a name for a less-than-desirable character, and then six years later gave the same name to my oldest son. When he was old enough to read some of my wips, he asked why I had named him after this idiot. I told him NOT to follow in the fictional character's footsteps, and then felt the need to redeem the character in a later work.
I've also loosely based stories around my friends' lives, and in one case, my BFF called me to say she loved it, and 'so that's what my life would have been like, had I stayed on track!'
Amber, I try to be careful with names, nobody I know!
Oh Molly, I wouldn't want that to happen with one of my children. My youngest (who obviously doesn't know what I write), keeps asking when I'm gonna write a story about her! Ummm, NEVER.
I've only rarely based stories on true events, but it never fails to surprise me how often something I wrote later turns out to be entirely too close to the truth.
My sister loves to accuse me of basing my stories on her--honestly I don't!
Hahahaha...in my first book, I had a very controlling father. My dad thought I was talking about HIM! Sooooo not true; I was having conflict with a neighbor and THAT's who I was channeling, LOL:)
Hi Amber! Since I mostly write SFR, my characters/plots, even most names are so way out there I don't usually include any real life stuff or people, not unless I meet a friend who works in outer space, lol! Just being silly...
I wrote "Adult Education" for a friend's Birthday gift based on her real life experiences and her un-lived fantasies and oddly enough that's the story people often find the most difficult to believe.
XXOO Kat
Isn't that crazy Kat! LOL
Welcome to the Naughty Nine Amber! I love reading all these stories! Since nobody I know reads my books I haven't run into those problems but I'll keep that in mind!
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