The problem with letting your family read your fiction is that they start trying to guess who all the characters “really are”!

Dad, just because the mother in The Last Day on Earth drinks a lot of tea, doesn’t mean that the characters is based on, or even just Mum in disguise.

I took the tea drinking and gave it to the character to make her seem more real. But I also gave her a bunch of other characteristics that my own mother definitely doesn’t have.

I do that sometimes in my writing. I grab random bits of information or characteristics from things, animals, and people I know in my real life, and give them to a character. A made up character. A character who is not meant to be So-and-So in disguise.

But that doesn’t stop the “Oh yes, and Tim is really Mark, and are you meant to be Lucy or Claire…?”

No. He is not. Tim is Tim. A made up character out of my head. And I’m neither.

I hope this post isn’t coming across as whining about my family. I’m not, I’m so glad that they read my story and that they’re so enthusiastic about it. I was kind of amused by the guessing, but also kind of exasperated/bemused as most of them didn’t seem to believe me when I said that the characters were made up and not deliberately based on anyone in particular.

Ah well.