Sometimes Reality Slips In

There’s a question that lots of folks like to ask authors, and that is something along the lines of, “Is anything in your book based on real life/real experience?”

Usually when I am asked a question like this, I go off on a long explanation comparing real life to the seed that turns into the flower of your novel. Or I say real life is like an essential ingredient in a soup, or bread, or maybe cake, that is transformed by the making. (For example, you can’t make a good cake without baking powder, but certainly the finished product neither looks nor tastes like baking powder, thank goodness.)

And it’s not that this isn’t true. Real life is the food that your novel consumes and then turns into energy, or waste product, or whatever. But sometimes, if we authors are honest–well, if I’m honest–there’s a bit more of a direct corellation.

Take the band that Charlotte, Taryn, and Sylvia compete against at Earhorn in Being Friends with Boys. While most of that entire scenario is 100% fabricated, I’ll admit that I did slip a real-life band into the competition. Charlotte describes them this way:

The first group starts, and I’m like a zombie victim getting her brain sucked out. They’re guys–that much I can register–playing this bizarro-but-pretty ambient music. I have never seen the instruments they’re using. One of them is maybe a guitar neck turned to lie flat like a table, and the other one is–I don’t even know. A box with some antennas coming out of it that the guy just moves his hands toward and back. Both are hooked into laptops. The sound coming out is so floaty and hypnotic that it almost shuts up the crazy, freaked-out feeling in my head and my stomach. Still, I must look like I’m about to collapse because Fabian reaches over and takes my hand. I cling to him for the rest of the set, not because it’s sparkly, but because it’s what I need.

In my novel, this happens to be a description of the actual band, Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel, a group based here in Atlanta. Here is a description of them by someone else besides Charlotte:

“Waves of ambiance and dreamy drones weave into one another to form a spectral web of sound.
The music is experimental by design, but easy on the ears…”  –Chad Radford, Creative Loafing Atlanta

And here is some of them performing.

Not to mention a link to some samples of their music.

I’ll let you decide what you think of them yourselves, but I did want to share my little secret.