You know how many fictional works have a disclaimer that goes something like this:

This work is fictional and any similarity between characters or events and real persons or events is accidental.

There are people out there who will find that as they read The Party Girl Story, they will realize that such a disclaimer cannot be applied to it. However it is important to a reader with special insight, to realize just what relationship the characters and events in this story have with the actual world. Real world events started the whole thing off. As the story evolved, however, the fictional characters established a life of their own. In discussion with friends who commented and thereby became contributors, I felt free to offer them a fully embellished "interesting story" version, rather than a truthful version.

The story itself explains its own evolution.

At the time of writing this, I was only just learning to do dialogue. The nature of the Don character and the Roy character were limited by what I can do. I want to learn to do woman-speak, but I am not good enough yet. The Don character is based on a bloke who is actually named Don. The real Don never took part in a conversation as depicted, but I thought of him when I was trying to create a character who would relate to the Richard character in that particular way. When Don read an early draft, he said that he had learned things about himself by reading the fictionalized Don - so it seems that I can write some characters.

Some of the line of thinking that the Don character introduced, was actually advanced by a female friend. She wasn't pleased that I put her ideas into the mouth of someone so different from her. The truth is that I just could not write convincing dialogue with a character like her. This is a challenge I would like to revisit.

As the old man said "At this stage it was clear that such a story did not have a life ahead as a published work, but was to be judged a success none-the-less because of the contribution it had made to many convivial conversations".

R.