My Semi-Autobiography: Did I or Didn’t I?

“Some day we’ll sit down and talk, and you can tell me which parts of Horseshoes and Hand Grenades are true.” So said my daughter over dinner one night.

She was referring to the fact that my novel about two young woman building their lives — careers, friendships and romances — in 1980s Boston is based in large part on my life. My “semi-autobiography” also wraps in themes of incest and workplace sexual harassment.

I never hid the troubling parts of my childhood from my kids, once they were old enough to process the information. But the book bares some cringe-worthy bits of my personal story. It also, as my daughter knows, includes many fictional scenes.

Why Semi-Autobiographical?

Why did I make up parts of the story? I wasn’t trying to hide what was true amidst what wasn’t. I simply knew that my actual story wasn’t dramatic enough to get published and sell books. After all, publishers like extreme stories: extreme poverty (Angela’s Ashes), extreme addiction (The Basketball Diaries), extreme natural disaster (The Perfect Storm). Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, intentionally, is not about extreme sexual abuse. It is the opposite. It portrays how even “mild” incest can mess a person up, and hopefully it gives people in that situation both the freedom to accept that they may have suffered, and the encouragement to heal in the way best for them.

My goal in mixing true and fictional elements was to stay true to that purpose while creating enough drama to build an entertaining, readable book.

What’s True & What’s Not

So which parts are true? Well, a lot of them. I really did work at the zoo in Boston, and the tales about the escaped wallaby and moving the gorillas into a new rainforest exhibit are true, although names were changed to protect the identities of the animals. 🙂 Those experiences were highlights of my career — actually, in the case of the gorillas, of my life — and I wanted to share them. And the escaped wallaby really was covered by the New York Times!

But I didn’t have an affair with an ad agency executive, as my character Shelby does.

Did I ever have a similar affair? I’m not saying…

I did work at a public relations firm in Boston, starting as an intern and working my way up, like Shelby does. Many of those work stories are true. I did, in fact, mess up the invitations to a swanky event we were organizing, and I really did have an amazing boss like Maggie.

But the tumbling shrimp scene is fictional — many of the special events I organized while working in PR had things go wrong, but nothing of that magnitude, I’m happy to say.

The ebook version of Horseshoes and Hand Grenades is now available on Bookshop.org, which benefits local indie booksellers. (Price $5.99)

Amazingly, considering how prevalent it was in the 1980s, I have not ever suffered workplace sexual harassment to the degree Ingrid does in the book. I took part in what I see now were inappropriate flirtations, but consider myself lucky to have never been on the receiving end of unwanted advances or worse.

But, I did experience incest as a child. My family did have mixed reactions, as is common, sadly. I did confront my abuser, but never publicly like Shelby does.

Ending on a happy note, I did have a handful of truly wonderful friends at that stage in my life, and we did spend much of one summer on Martha’s Vineyard, essentially partying our faces off. Much like the zoo stories, I wanted to share the incredible vibe of the Vineyard in those days. Since it’s no longer that way, I felt I was capturing a tiny slice of history.

But What About…

Shelby exhibits some truly cringe-inducing behavior in my semi-autobiography, due to her inner conflicts and troubled soul. Which of those actually happened to me and which did not? Perhaps I’ll never tell. A person’s entitled to some secrets after all. I’ll just say, I lived to tell the tale and that’s what matters.

Free Copy for Survivors

I wrote Horseshoes and Hand Grenades precisely to help other victims of incest and workplace harassment acknowledge that what happened matters. Sometimes it feels safer to stow away traumatic experiences instead of working through them so we can heal. I am living proof, and Shelby is fictional proof, that if at all possible, working through it makes you stronger in the end.

If you are a survivor, I would be honored to offer you a free ebook of the novel. Simply contact me using my website form and let me know.

In other news: Beautiful and Terrible Things has been named a finalist in The Wishing Shelf Book Awards (Adult Fiction category). Winners will be announced April 1.