While I have used real names and characters and historical situations I have also used more personal pieces of friends and fathers. There have been some date changes, some characters brought together, and some facts have been expanded or polished to suit the truth of fiction.
…Michael Ondaatje, at the close of his first novel, Coming Through Slaughter. How come when he says that phrase, “the truth of fiction,” it sounds magnificent, but when I do, I sound like a middle-aged hippie dad painting watercolors on an easel in the backyard shirtless in socks and short shorts?