Writing Real People Into a Fictional Setting - And Vice Versa!

A Literal Literary Loser Looks at Legalities

At last month’s Historical Novel Society North American Conference, my fellow History Through Fiction authors and I presented a panel entitled “Writing Real History in a Fictional Narrative.”

My latest two works of historical fiction, “The Nesting Dolls,” and “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region” are set in the Soviet Union of the 1930s, with a present day wrap-around narrative.

When I give books talks, one of the queries which inevitably comes up is, “How much of the stories are based on your real life family?”

My standard answer is, “You know those disclaimers at the front of the book which say: Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental? That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.”

But historical fiction writers are lucky. Most of the time, the persons to whom officially there is no resemblance, are dead. Safely dead. Non-Litigiously dead.

But what about when the time period is a little closer to home?

Thanks to all the changes that have taken place in the world of international competition since I first wrote my Figure Skating Mystery series, my novels, published by Berkley Prime Crime between 2003 and 2008, might as well be historical fiction now.

Except that most of the people I definitely did not write about are still alive.

The main person I definitely did not write about, two-time Olympic champion and long-time commentator Dick Button, turns 94 today. (He shares a birthday with my husband. They are both geniuses… in their own way.)

This excerpt from my first Figure Skating Mystery novel, “Murder on Ice,” is most definitely not about what it’s like to work with him, or why, the last time I did, I came down with shingles as a result of the stress.

Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

(Did I mention that, in addition to being a champion, an entrepreneur, and a genius, Dick is also a lawyer?)

The true stories are available in my non-fiction coffee table book, “Inside Figure Skating.” All the gossip I couldn’t fit in there, went into the mystery novels….