The 65% Factor

All in all, inside and out, I’d say the book is 65% true.  That is a fair number.  That accounts for everything:  names that were changed, incidents altered or somehow smoothed over, tinkering with the timeline, adding some things, taking things out.  That’s why I’m careful to say this is a novel and not a memoir.  It’s more important to get across the message of the book rather than to have it serve as a log or chronicle.  The aspect of some tangibles may have been changed, but not the essence.  If anything, the essence is stronger because there is magic involved. I don’t want to give away too much, because that’s my artistic license as an author. But as an example, I’ll tell you the trip started on a Monday rather than a Sunday.  Why?  I needed an extra day on the timeline. Because I inserted that day at Hearst Castle (Day 18).  But totally made up?  Not really. It’s a compilation of visiting Hearst Castle in 2001 with my wife on our own cross-country trip (by car), and an overnight stay on a boat that my sister and I made to friends in South Jersey years ago.  Why move up everything a day on the calendar?  Because I wanted the struck-by-lightning story of July 17, 1971, to stay intact. So everything coming before got bumped up by a day. Make sense?