Wings of Forever

As I sat at my keyboard writing this novel, I became aware of a strong view of mine: there is no such thing as good fiction.  If it’s good, it isn’t fiction.  It’s more the re-creation of real people and happenings experienced by the writer, who has leeway to add imagination to the work – names changed, but not always locations.

Let me coin a word for good fiction: tru-fic – a fictional story with characters and events that are inspired by a witness to real life, aka, writer.  I find my favorite tru-fic authors are those that have lived the longest.  The older the writer, the more he has witnessed, the more truth he can convey.

My age?  Let’s just say somewhere past middle.  Over the years I have experienced heart-ripping tragedy, fear so intense I was sure to faint, love outside my understanding, consequences of wrong behavior and its opposite.  And some events, as they say, “stranger than fiction.”

Many of the incidents in this tru-fic story actually happened – the details of the sea-rescue after the accident of a Navy Jet; my leading character’s father’s unexpected death; the episode of the extremely rare disease.  There’s a virgin in my story.  I was my wife’s first and only guy, so I knew how to write about one in this book.  The mission in a hostile country – did it really happen?  I can’t say, it’s classified “Top Secret” … you get the idea.

Most of the places, historical events, and geographic locations in this story are real and carefully researched, with deviation from reality only when needed to make a more interesting story.