Lesbian ebook character is obviously me! WWYD?

[Literaryalterego]

Hello. Name changed for this.
Last week while lazily browsing the Internet I decided to look up an old University classmate who works in publishing and has kept in touch sporadically over the years. Last time was probably 10 years ago.

I noticed she has written a few short stories and they’re available as ebooks. Now, she very kindly sent me a copy of her first (self-published) book which I didn’t particularly enjoy but as Kindle is so cheap and immediate I thought I’d look at what was available. Scrolling through the titles one dated 2012, so 2 years after we last had contact, caught my eye. The plot seemed eerily familiar so I downloaded it.

FGS she’s written about our friendship as 18yos, including very specific details about appearance, family facts, habits. Nothing particularly unflattering....

BUT THEN it turns into a lesbian fantasy of fondling, fingering and oral sex (my character on hers)!

None of which actually happened, nor did I ever want it to happen. I’m a happily married heterosexual with no lesbian experience. To me at the time she was just a lost and slightly creepy friend/classmate who I told once, very clearly after a timid advance, I was not interested in for anything more than companionship.

This happened on Sunday. After a day or so of feeling alternately flattered to have been transformed onto the printed page and furious at the misrepresentation I now don’t know what to do!
I don’t want to show it to anybody close, especially not to DH, as it does expose some of my 18yo self-doubt and spikiness quite accurately. She is a writer, after all.
I also think it would be best to let bygones be bygones. We have no contact and have each gone our own way in life.
However, it does seem a huge violation to have been so literally transported into a “scene” that I have never been interested in. Part of me wants to kick back.
What would you do?

It doesn't necessarily mean your friend fancied you.

I rather think it does

It clearly hasn't been on the radar of anyone you know since around 2012 so it's unlikely anyone will read it now unless you draw attention to it. Also the only ones who know what the true to life elements of the story are, are you and the author. Therefore on the tiny chance someone you know reads it and makes the connection there's nothing to stop you denying that the self doubts and spikiness as portrayed in the book are any more based on real life than the lesbian element.

Similar happened to me except it was a BBC2 serial. I got a bit annoyed. Then realised the fact my life has interesting enough (at times) to warrant that was a good and rare thing.

Have no contact with the person now though, I value discretion in my close relationships.

You could send her a clip from the Friends episode “The One With Rachel’s Big Kiss” and a note saying * in our lives, no coconut shells went bump in the night.

As long as she didn't name you or go about saying it's based entirely on fact then I don't know if I could be bothered about it.

I'd just pretend I'd never read it.

No one will know it's you.

Even she might have forgotten the details and what she has put in the book is a much redacted mashed up recollection of all things teenager. You recognise something, no one else will unless you start bringing it up.

I’d just leave it. As you say, she is a writer and you have no contact anymore.

Sometimes when looking for characters to use in creative writing, people use several people they know to turn into one.

There’s nothing you can do. Writers take inspiration from real life people / events etc all the time, there’s no law against it (unless you’re actually identified by name and the work is defamatory).

There’s no legal recourse here; and you’d likely draw much more attention to it by trying to challenge her. Try not to worry about it too much, and comfort yourself that in the very unlikely event that anyone you know reads the book, they’re much less likely to identify the character as having been inspired by you than you were.

Sometimes when looking for characters to use in creative writing, people use several people they know to turn into one.

^^ this. The character you think of as you may not be how she perceived you at all. She used a situation familiar to you. Beyond that, it’s hard to tell I imagine as the scenario she created is very far from the truth.

What can you do? absolutely nothing that's what! just be pleased you were interesting enough to write about and then forget about it (I'd probably tell dh )

I'm an author. Everybody thinks you've put them in your books when you haven't.

I'm a non-published writer, and I absolutely don't.

But my mum and aunt are both published authors and they absolutely do. In fact, they used to competitively snipe at each other and criticise each other's lives, choices and families in print.

If it makes you feel any better OP, my aunt named a character after me, and described her as me to a T, then had me brutally and graphically die so that my remains could only be identified by my jewellery (also identifiable as mine in real life). It was revenge for the way my mum had last portrayed my cousin.

(I quite often win at 'who has the most bonkers family feuds' though)

I don’t know that episode of “Friends” Zazie. It might be worth watching for the comedy element!
The book only has three reviews (2 good, one praising the sex scene(!) and one bad) so the audience is pretty limited. It’s not likely to be made into a BBC drama!

thecats wow! your family christmases must be interesting

Creepy! Now you have your own gay erotic fan fic though just like someone from Harry Potter.

Just think of it as fanfiction Celebrities have things like this written about them all the time (and often much worse) and there's nothing they can do about it, except ignore it and not allow it to impinge on their lives.

Erotic fan fiction.

thecats are you a Drabble or a Byatt? . That is hilarious.
OP, you need to let this one go.

BringMeTea I was thinking just that!

She sent you a book in the hope you'd look.

Do not say anything.....

your family christmases must be interesting

Shockingly, they're no longer on speaking terms . However, THAT wasn't the final nail in the coffin even!

I was only 14 when she wrote that too. I found it less embarrassing than the way my mum wrote about me in her real-life serial journalist's column.

Come to think of it, this might be why I have the hide of a rhino.

As long as it isn’t recognisably and clearly you, she is allowed to do this.

It’s the one with Winona Ryder in it Literaryalterego

I think you should link to the ebook, OP, so we can decide whether you should be flattered or offended.

I went to school with a now published author and I know it’s me in her book as she admitted it. It’s set in our teenage years and among other things, she describes a specific event that we all attended. I was flattered and insulted in equal measure as she implies that I was somewhat promiscuous - I was 😂. She then goes on to say how her character was envious of my character’s self-confidence and ability to attract boys. She described this as bees round a honey pot. All in all, it amused me.

Leave a review focussing in the wonderful ness of “your” character. You need to be careful so as you aren’t identifiable though. Something like “from the description of the characters labia, it’s almost easy to imagine her in middle age as nothing short of spectacular to the heterosexual men she meets”