Oh crap, it’s him!

Sometimes, I write about real people.

…

Okay, I always write about real people. All my characters have faces that actually belong to someone in the so called real world, but they’re camouflaged with so many layers of makeup that it should be impossible to recognize them.

For example, Kit Marlowe borrowed not only his face but a few (imagined) traits from a British singer, just because they actually resembled each other (based on the putative portrait of Marlowe). Once I’d connected the two men in my mind, it was kind of impossible to avoid borrowing a few other things, too. His charmingly mocking tone. His anger. His critical view of everything to do with politics.

I’ll be forever grateful. I might not have published anything at all if not for him.

But sometimes I end up in the same room as the people I write about. Last spring, I published a short story called Strings Attached. In it, a conductor and a violinist meet for a one-off concert in London, and their instant attraction becomes a problem as they head off again in the morning, each tied to his own international schedule. For these characters, I used two famous faces who shall remain unnamed. Suffice it to say that they’re extremely accomplished, and my writing that story was nothing short of fangirling.

Well, imagine my surprise when I went to a concert in my home town, and it turned out that “my” conductor was conducting it! We had really good seats, too, so I was sitting five yards behind the man for three hours, feeling weird and somehow visible in the darkness of the concert hall. Of course, he didn’t know about my short story, but still. It made me stop and think.

What if one of my borrowed faces did read “their” story and somehow saw themselves in it? How awful. Or what if someone close to them picks it up and makes the connection? What if someone else saw the resemblance between the Marlowe portrait and that singer, and decided to take offense?

Of course, the chances of that happening are infinitesimal, but as I said, it got me thinking. Ultimately, it gave birth to another story – this time a novel, Not Safe For Work. In it, I explore what would happen if the people who star in fanfic actually got to read it. How would their lives be impacted by untrue, sexy stories going viral? How would their friendship survive?

Main characters Jakob and Leo have been friends for ages, and they both think they know everything about each other. But when Jakob finds a blog filled with steamy fics about the two of them, his life is turned upside down. He starts to doubt everything – Leo, his friends, his colleagues, even his own heart. Hell, he even starts to question reality itself.

Not Safe For Work is my nightmare vision of a harmless phenomenon gone horribly wrong. It’s what would happen if the conductor at that concert stumbled on Strings Attached and thought “Hey… this sounds just like me.”

Then again, maybe I’d be doing him a favour. Maybe he and that cute violinist really should be together.

Which is what Jakob in Not Safe For Work slowly realizes…