I thought you were someone famous

It was the lady in the library who said it: I’d been asked to talk to the local reading group and God knows who they thought they were getting – J.K. Rowling or Dan Brown or, at the very least, the author of Cloud Atlas. Anyway, they got me. She adjusted her glasses and looked at me incredulously. "But I know you!" she said accusingly. "I know you by sight, anyway. I’ve seen you in Tescos." (True: - as my family, including the various dogs and cats, won’t stop eating, I have to keep shopping. Sometimes I think I’m going to get charged rent if I go in much more.) She brandished the copy of Mad About The Boy? that the library had thoughtfully provided her with. "Did you write this?" I acknowledged my guilt. She sat down, looking at me warily, as if waiting for the real Dolores Gordon-Smith to pop up. "I thought you were someone famous."

You see, the problem was, that as I write about the 1920’s, she expected someone looking like this:

 

 

 

 

or this ......



 

 

 

 

 

 

and we'd have an afternoon like this ....



 

 

 

 

.... whereas, of course, it was tea and biscuits and chat – and me. What’s more, I’d Made It All Up. Well, yes, that’s fiction for you. Ask Agatha Christie how many murders she investigated and the answer is worryingly low. Terry Pratchett has never actually been to Ankh-Morpork and C.S. Lewis never found the way through the wardrobe. (Or, at least, I don’t think he did.) The trick with fiction is not so much as to write about what you know as to know about what you write.

What I wish I could make up is better weather. To anyone basking under an Australian sun or in some Tropic clime – congratulations, you lucky beggar. Peel another grape and think of me sitting under a thick grey sky in Manchester with the rain hissing down. You can see where an imagination comes in handy!

See you again and all the best,

Dolores