I'm gonna have me some fun.

This has been an odd, sad but enlightening week, so this post will be a little more personal than usual. But there is a saving grace to keep us all on topic with the following question: How much of your own emotional experiences should you put into a fictional story?

Since plenty of people who read this blog know me personally, I’ll keep things short and sweet: This week my fiancée and I broke up. It isn’t fun, but we remain close friends.

One thing that made me laugh, though, was remembering which scene I have to write next in the follow-up to Queen of the World. Ethanei, an incredibly drunk vagrant, has recently found his estranged wife in bed with another man. The start of the chapter cuts to him lying sprawled over a table spilling his emotional guts between sobs and curses to one of the series’ main character, Kanderil, who listens with a patient unease. He’s heartbroken, resentful and has given up trying to keep a lid on things, preferring instead to drown out his thoughts with alcohol. The guy’s self-destruction is in full-swing.

I can say with absolutely sincerity that this is a coincidence. The scene was the next in line and is not being written as result of my newly-found single status. There are plenty of written notes and around four preceding chapters to support my claim. Also the scene I described isn’t what I’ve been doing personally. There’s been a lot of beer involved but I haven’t quite reached the stage poor Ethanei has. However there are certain similarities between his current scene and mine. I reckon I could lay out a lot of my feelings – that is, the way I’m thinking and the things I want to say right now – through Ethanei’s actions and words, slipping them between the alcohol-fuelled excess and limb flailing. Being a fictional fantasy story I could get away with it too, most likely. In fantasy? Pfft. People expect angry men to fuckin’ RAGE, violent men to murder innocents on a nightly basis, and heartbroken men to start a quest or adventure or something equally redemptive. (They should at the very least write some poetry or sit in a bar staring at the same tepid ale for hours.) It wouldn’t be too hard to be metaphorical about the literal.

But I don’t want to pour too much out on the page. I want to focus and direct my personal experience into the dialogue, to give them a little realism and direction. But the rant Ethanei is going to give must be directed as his ex-wife, Claira. The words shouldn’t be directed at my ex-fiancée. So there’s the trick. It’s a fine line because I’ve already shared this joke with her and she found it kind of funny as well, but it also means she’ll be acutely aware of the scene when she reads it. I don’t want to offend her or come across as an idiot.

The adage ‘write what you know’, which I touched on a few posts back, is mightily applicable here. Other events in my life have been introduced to scenes and characters. Little sayings. Mannerisms. Almost all of them are so far in the background, or so layered underneath good ol’ fashioned fictional nonsense, that I don’t think even my closest friends of family could point out a line when Queen of the World launches and say ‘Oh man, this is so based on that time you...’ But my personal belief is that my experiences should add texture and a touch of reality to my fictional work. It shouldn’t dominate or make my created world semi-autobiographical. I need to save my real life stories for when I’m stinking rich and famous and am encouraged to pen my memoirs, after all.

Anyway, we’re getting to around two and a half months before the book should be released. Things are a little behind schedule – well, actually more than a little – but I retain my immense faith in Sara and Inspired Quill to get us back on course and keep things ticking over. I like to think I’ve had quite a lot of stuff going on this year, but it’s nothing compared to the amount of work and various other projects my editor has planned. I do my best not to stress her out with my occasional panic about things. Pretty sure it’s working so far.

As for now, I’ll be in Norway for another couple of weeks and then shipping off back to Essex for the foreseeable future. That’s going to be a barrel of fun. At the very least I will be doing much more writing in my old bedroom, which is the plan for now – type like a machine until I find a job to get things ticking over again. Good thing we’re heading into springtime. I haven’t spent a summer in England for about four years. Pub gardens, suspect barbecues and music festivals. Doesn’t sound so bad, does it?