Fiction or memoir?

I am struck by the view from where I write.

Is something fake or is it real? Is it virtual or actual? Hypocritic or authentic? Am I dreaming or awake? Is it “AI?” I’m recalling advertisements like “Is it butter or is it margarine?” Ha! But where does fiction come from?

For me, it came from experience. Shanghaied started innocently, but when my life changed, it became autobiographic, some of it even written while I was sailing offshore and alone.

I went into telling Shanghaied’s story knowing only three things: there would be a shipwreck, an important character would die, and “our hero” could never return to who he had been. But I didn’t go into the “telling” (as an actual terrain that I entered) until I recognized that “our hero” was me, and that to find my way “back,” I had to find his way back. That’s when the story became “real.”

Four days after publication, I awoke asking myself how I would answer someone if they question the book’s ending. Only then did I realize that the shipwreck was my wife’s death, the character who died was the part of me that died with her, and I cannot return to who I was. But what’s left of me is back, thanks to loving the people I love and to their loving me, and maybe a little to telling Shanghaied’s story.

This year, I’ve witnessed the deaths of my father and aunt. So, the story before me now asks how I will get to my end. If there is a sequel, I need it to lead there. And if it doesn’t come from me, can it come from Eamon?