I have (so far) based a fictional
character on a real life acquaintance just once. And in doing so, I discovered
that writing someone you really loathe into a novel is amazingly satisfying and
cleansing!
Vamparazzi is the fourth novel in my Esther
Diamond urban fantasy series, published by DAW Books (the sixth book in the
series, The Misfortune Cookie, was
released last month; in between them was #5, Polterheist). Esther is a struggling actress in contemporary New
York who gets involved in various supernatural misadventures. In Vamparazzi, she has a supporting role in
The Vampyre, an off-Broadway show
which is a (wholly fictional) stage adaptation of the (real) 19th century story
by Dr. John Polidori.
The eponymous lead character in the
show, i.e. the vampire (or vampyre), is played by an attention-seeking D-list
celebrity who attracts throngs of vampire groupies and paparazzi. During
Halloween weekend, when vamparazzi hysteria around the theater reaches its
height, there is a mysterious murder by exsanguination. Esther Diamond's
efforts to keep the curtain from coming down on her show bring her into contact
with crazed vampire fans, anti-vampire activists, real vampires, and an ancient
cult of ruthless vampire hunters. Meanwhile, a skeptical cop who is Esther's
ex-almost-boyfriend is convinced that she may be the killer's next target.
I had a lot of fun with this story in
multiple ways. One of the best ways
involved taking much-needed revenge on a former neighbor of mine.
Back when I was plotting Vamparazzi, I was living in an apartment
complex and had a very troublesome
next door neighbor. I had filed multiple formal complaints against her with the
management of that complex. Crazy Girl (not her real name) was the noisiest
person I've ever known. Her shrieking hysterics, tearful rages, and
foul-mouthed fits regularly woke up me at 2:00 AM and went on for an hour or
two. Virtually all of Crazy Girl's screaming tantrums and profanity-laced
hysteria occurred when quarreling with her visiting boyfriend. They had a
relationship that made mob wars look peaceful by comparison, and the fights
were as frequent as they were noisy and melodramatic.
Thanks to their volume, I know that
Crazy Girl found her boyfriend unreliable and untrustworthy, that she believed
he lied to her and let her down on many occasions, and that she often doubted
whether he really cared about her. I know the squalid details of her many
grievances against him precisely because she constantly screeched them at
full-volume right outside my doors
and windows, usually in the middle of the night. And this went on regularly
whether or not the boyfriend was there,
since Crazy Girl frequently enacted her half of these noisy late-night quarrels
on her cell phone.
Indeed, even when not shrieking at the
boyfriend, Crazy Girl lived with her cell phone glued to her ear, yammering
about her petty complaints and gripes in a voice like a foghorn—also right outside my doors and windows. Her
voice, yakking non-stop on her cell, regularly penetrated every room of my
apartment except my bathroom.
Even when she was inside her own
apartment, instead of on my doorstep, she often screamed so loudly at her
boyfriend, either in person or on the phone, that the noise came straight through
my walls. Crazy Girl was also prone to fits of physical violence in which she'd
throw things around her home so ferociously that it would make my apartment shake.
Well, even after Crazy Girl moved out
of our apartment complex (to go move in
with that same boyfriend—pity their poor neighbors!), the stress she inflicted
had become so habitual that I couldn't shake her off. I kept flinching in
expectation of a screaming fit penetrating my walls. Every time someone passed
my windows, I braced myself for wailing hysterics. At night, I kept listening
for a sudden tantrum of building-shaking violence.
Until finally, to exorcise this demon
that lingered even though Crazy Girl was now gone... I wrote her into Vamparazzi as Mad Rachel, a shrieking,
wailing, foul-mouthed, self-obsessed actress who shares a dressing room with my
exasperated protagonist, Esther Diamond. Mad Rachel lives with a cell phone
glued to her ear, engages in constant screaming matches with her boyfriend,
ignores repeated reprimands for disrupting performances of The Vampyre with this behavior, and has such noisy hysterics in any
crisis that even hardened New York cops and bloodthirsty vampires can't cope
with being around her.
And you know what? It felt great to write this. It was some of the
most fun I ever had at the keyboard!
It also banished the ghost of Crazy
Girl at long last. Having my protagonist convey to readers what it's like for
her to share a dressing room with Mad Rachel, eight shows per week, relieved
the burden of stress that I was still carrying from having unwillingly shared
my living space with Crazy Girl for two years. It also gave me psychological
closure (and great satisfaction) to
inflict on Mad Rachel the well-merited indignities that, alas, I could not
inflict on Crazy Girl in real life (well, not without incurring a lot of
complications and possibly a police record).
There is, however, one drawback to this
very satisfying conclusion to that noisily tawdry chapter in my home life. I
suspect that when people read the book, they may find Mad Rachel too extreme to
be believable. And they will think this, ironically, of the only character
whose behavior I have ever based entirely on that of a real person.
*****
Vamparazzi and the other Esther Diamond novels
are available wherever books are sold, including the most recent release in the
series, The Misfortune Cookie. You
can find the author on the Web at LauraResnick.com.
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