I originally published this on Cellardorians in January 2012 as a guest post. I liked it well enough that I thought I’d go ahead and re-post prior to the release of my second novel.

I’ve been asked this question a lot lately in reference to my novel, Beauty Rising, “Was your father really like that?” In my story, the protagonist tries to carry out his abusive father’s dying wish, and it has made more than a few people question my own background to see if I was inspired by a dysfunctional past.

All of this got me thinking of the writer’s mind – which truly can be a scary place if you happen to stumble upon it at the right, or perhaps wrong, moment. Writers try to tell tales of truth or universal ideals wrapped in a fictional shroud of imagination where reality and make-believe co-exist, co-habitat, and intermingle in ways which can make it difficult to separate the truth from the fiction.

I actually went through a phase where I thought that fiction felt void of meaning. I kept asking myself how can a slice of make-believe could ever trump the power and exhilarating strength of historical fact. A quick perusal of movies which impacted me seemed to bolster that belief. Who can forget Spielberg’s “Amistad” or “Shindler’s List”? Both, of course, true stories. And what of “The Lady” – which told the heroic tale of Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, or even “The King’s Speech?” Everybody loves a tale of truth – the courageous stories of bold individuals who seem to embody the human spirit. How can fiction bring real truth to life on par with that of history?

While I still tend to favor stories grounded in factual matter, I have come to appreciate the power of fictional storytelling and how it too conveys the truth of humankind. It wasn’t my undergrad degree in English that brought me this appreciation. It was my own writing.

When the story of Beauty Rising was staring me in the face and starting to force itself out, I couldn’t help but survey and ponder the many years that I lived in Vietnam which served as the background for much of the story. While my parents are wonderful and served as no guide for how I crafted Martin’s parents, there are so many other parts of the story that convey actual events.

For example, chapter one – The Wallet – comes from personal experience. I was in that crowd as the big, awkward foreigner, surrounded by a sea of black-haired people, completely out of my element only to have my wallet stolen. I experienced the little Vietnamese boys who would come up and pull the hair on my arms and legs, laughing themselves silly that someone could be ridiculously that hairy. I sat many long minutes waiting for the pomp and empty circumstances of a university anniversary celebration to begin where we had to wait endlessly for the dignitaries to arrive, revealing great insight into the Vietnamese world view. I experienced the gentle hospitality of the simple Vietnamese people who would invite a stranger to tea or who would go out of their way to make a foreign friend feel at home. I even experienced the thin, easily-crackable toilet seats and the five foot shower heads which irritated Martin.  All of these real-life experiences lend a layer of authenticity that I could never have written about if I hadn’t experienced it myself. There are no travel books or no Google searches which could have painted the pictures of real Vietnamese life vibrant enough without me actually being there. This is, I hope, where the truth in my writing emerges – wrapped in the detail of someone who has walked the steps of the protagonist so that a fictional story could emerge which, hopefully, illuminates universal truths and poignantly detailed descriptions of the Vietnamese world view – all neatly encased in a fictional story.

So now I understand a little more. Fiction thrives where truth abides. It is a lesson I hope to keep illustrating in all of my stories still not written.

PS: I’m now thinking how this idea impacted my writing of The Recluse Storyteller. Hmmm. I feel another post coming on.