Carl Hiassen is my favorite author, and when I started writing the “Adventures In coastal Living” stories and the stories about the “Folkie Palace” on Boston’s Beacon Hill, I was inspired by him. Hiassen insists that you can’t make up stuff as bizarre as real life. True life is better than fiction. Looking back on the inspirations for the short stories I’ve written, I agree.
So in writing the short stories about my experiences living in Coastal Maine or on Beacon Hill in the 1960s, I always try to start with factual events, people, and the pure idiocy that entails. I am sometimes surprised at how little I have to invent or exaggerate, all I have to do is copy what happened.
It’s true. Fiction is not as amazing as real life; just look at national politics these days.
Yeah, some things you just can’t make up, they would seem too crazy!