A Family Dilemma

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I’ll never forget the day my mom called me, all upset, and, I’ll admit, enraged. She was very unhappy with me, to say the least, because she’d decided that I’d modeled Charlotte McNally’s gorgeous but hyper-critical mother after her.  And moreover, that this person had gone to Boston to have a facelift. And now, she complained, everyone would that that was her.

I explained my way out of it, and ended by saying—Mom, it’s fiction. Charlie McNally is fictional, and Mrs. McNally is fictional She’s not you.

And there we left it.

Mom was right, of course, but I never admitted that.

Families can be tricky. As the wonderful Bryan Reardon explains.

THE PERFECT PLAN?

       By Bryan Reardon

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

             George Bernard Shaw

 

Is that good advice for a writer? I wonder. Recently, at a book festival in Michigan, someone asked me if I write a series. The easy answer was, 'no.' When I thought about the question, my mind made a new connection between my first two books, and my third which comes out this year. The first book is about a school shooting. The second about the bombing of New York's Penn Station. The third book about an abduction. They've been categorized as thrillers, but that never felt 100 percent accurate to me. 

When I got past the action of the concepts, I realized that the three had something much deeper in common. Not a series, but a trilogy of thematically themed stories, all focusing on family.

THE PERFECT PLAN (June 18, Dutton Books) is the story of the two brothers. Together, they seem to have survived a horrible childhood. People see them as strong, resilient and fiercely loyal. That's on the surface. If anyone looked too closely, though, they might see the cracks. They might catch a glimpse at their skeleton.

The older brother, Andrew, is a rising politician, running for office. The younger, Liam, is dangerous and unpredictable. Their story begins with Liam stalking one of Andrew's campaign staffers. When he abducts her in a parking lot, things get worse. Liam seems to taunt Drew with behaviors that seem out of control. 

But, when it comes to the Brennan brothers, things are never how they appear. Their family secret runs deep and dark. And by the end of their story, it will be dragged into the light.

It is in their back story, that I realized this story focuses on family. The brothers grew up in an abusive home, the children of an alcoholic mother. I dove deep into that portion, painting their childhood as vividly as I could. But there is a very real danger in doing that. See, as a writer, if you write about family, your family is automatically going to think you are writing about them.

I certainly don't write about my family. When you plot a story, you need your character to be a certain way, make certain decisions, all to further the arc. If I was to actually write about my family, I doubt too many people would want to read it. My life is normal. Boring. Certainly no one has been abducted. So, I make stuff up.

But…..

Here's where it gets dangerous. Although no one in my stories is an actual real-life person, I can't say that about some settings, or incidents. In The Perfect Plan, some of the story takes place in the backyard of my childhood home. My brother did teach me to tie my shoes. There are a few real-world nuggets thrown in there. I find myself doing that to help me ground the story. Make the characters more believable. The problem is, if some is true, then people might believe all of it really happened. When you write the kinds of books I write, that is not a great thing.

As writers, it can be scary. We are putting ourselves out there in a very real and vulnerable way. As our stories unfold, we might come across a choice. Use something that might resemble a person in our lives. Or shy away, afraid of what they might think.

 Right or wrong, I have chosen the former. It is a risk. There are still people in my life that don't speak to me because they think they were in my first book (though they weren't). But I do it because it works for me, despite the risk.

The funny thing about family, though, is that we tend to keep it all locked inside. On the surface, everything looks great. Just check our Facebook pages. But that's never the whole story, is it? We do anything we can to keep that skeleton locked away. We certainly don't let it dance in front of the neighbors. And I find myself asking the same question over and over again. Do we really know the people we are closest to? And, more interestingly, do they truly know us?

HANK: Yup, that’s a tough choice.  Is what’s best for the book what’s best for the real people? And how do we even know?

What do you think about using your real life in a book? Or—even more difficult—appropriating someone else’s?

And a copy of THE PERFECT PLAN to one luck commenter!

(And yesterday’s winner of  A LONG WAY DOWN  is Margaret Hamilton! Email me your address! Yay!)

THE PERFECT PLAN 

From New York Times bestselling author Bryan Reardon comes a tense, twisting story about two brothers locked together in a dangerous game—and an unforgettable tale of a family’s dark secrets.

Liam Brennan teeters on the edge. Early one morning, he snaps, kidnapping a young woman who works for Drew Brennan, Liam’s older brother and the upstart candidate in a heated election. This sudden, vicious attack appears to be the beginning of an unthinkable spiral. But when it comes to the Brennan brothers, nothing is what it seems.
 
To the rest of the world, Liam is the troubled problem child who grew up to be his brother’s enforcer, while Drew has always been the perfect son and a charismatic leader who has his sights set on the governor’s mansion with his charming and beautiful wife, Patsy, by his side.
 
Now, as Liam tries to stay one step ahead of the authorities and his brother, every passing minute provides a deeper glimpse into the brothers’ past, long hidden behind a picture-perfect suburban veneer. With the threat of the truth surfacing, Liam and Drew are driven toward one final, desperate act...

 Bryan Reardon is the bestselling author of Finding Jake and The Real Michael Swann, and now, THE PERFECT PLAN (from Dutton.).  Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Bryan worked for the State of Delaware for more than a decade, starting in the Office of the Governor. He holds a degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania, with his wife and kids.