IT’S JUST A STORY
Readers of the novels of my series, Once Upon a Time in the Texas Panhandle, sometimes think they recognize people they know, places they’ve been to, or events they have witnessed. They ask me, “Is that So-and-So?” Or they declare, “That must be Such-and-Such a store in Such-and-Such a town.” Or they say, “I’m wondering if there was someone who stimulated your thinking about This-and-That.” Or they question, “Does that culture really allow pre-marital sex in the parents’ home—like you say in your book?”
I must remind these readers, “It’s just a story.” I originally set out to write an updated history of Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle, with pages and pages of footnotes to document the objective facts of my objective history. I wanted to do this because at one time I thought I wanted to be a university professor. I hoped that such a history would have impressed the head of the history department of some major center of learning and thus helped get my foot in the door. But in the end, I decided to write a story rather than a history. And after I wrote one story, I couldn’t help myself—I had to write another. What is the difference between history and story? History is what really happened. Whereas a story is what might have happened. You can’t make up history. But a story is just that—something made-up, a product of the writer’s imagination. So, my novels are just stories—things that could have, might have, maybe ought to have happened, but never really happened. And the characters are just that: persons who never were, but maybe could have been.
Readers also ask, “Is your story an autobiography?” “Are the things in your book things that you did or that you saw others do, while you were growing up in the Texas Panhandle?” I answer that there is a difference between “autobiographical” and “autobiography.” If someone in a story is autobiographical, he or she is “based on” someone who passed through my life, but the character is just that: an “invented” character in a story. If someday I write my autobiography, I will describe as accurately as I can, “real” people whom I really knew.
An example will help explain. My latest story, soon to be published, is entitled, Colleen and the Statue. Colleen is an Irish Immigrant girl. Her personality, looks, and aspirations are based on several young ladies I knew in my youth. But she is invented—not like anyone I knew. And the statue in the story is based on the real Confederate statue that still stands in Ellwood Park of Amarillo, Texas. But the statue of my story is not the statue in Ellwood Park. It is an imagined statue in my invented Mackenzie Central Park of my imagined town of Mackenzie, Texas. The real statue has an objective, documented history behind it. My invented statue has its own history, which I imagined.
I am a retired lawyer. I do not want to get sued for libel because in my book I misrepresented someone or someone’s relative. As I lawyer, I carefully interviewed my clients and I assembled admissible documentary evidence to back up what I presented in court. And I warned my clients against lying under oath. I instructed them to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, even if it hurt their case. As an author, I carefully avoid describing real people and real events. I try to make sure that it is perfectly clear to my readers that it is just a story.