New Novel Progress: The line between fiction and history.

I've been working on the part of the new novel where the operation is coming together, all the undercover operatives and their support elements are in place, and things can get nasty.

Along the way to this point, I've also tied the entirely fictional telling of the story to places, agendas, and especially people that were real or very close facsimiles of real people. That's fine, of course... This Is Fiction is clearly stated and disclaimed. But like the band in Remember When, if the fictional version can be enhanced by naturalistic references to real events, it's all a lot more fun.

Here's an example of a person in real history who lends his name and agenda to the character (or in this case, off-stage character reference) in the story. He had an amazing career for the bad guy side back in the day, was corrupt as hell, and got a bullet in the head from his own team when he was found out. In the story, in 1984, he's pulling some of the strings. A plausible fiction, that.

The real-history Arnaldo Ochoa. That link is a Wikipedia link for ease of access by readers here, but there are a few footnotes and links from that page to source material that anyone interested in more information can look at. Enjoy!