Yep. Sure do or, rather, did; maybe still do. Indeed, for nearly 40 years I wrote or edited nonfiction–safety studies, white papers, investigative reports. The kind of thing a lowly production assistant working at an aviation insurance consortium and then later a bureaucrat would write.

But at home, in the privacy of my office there, I’d write fiction. Speculative fiction. Spy fiction. Flash fiction. Fan fiction. Emphasis on “fiction.”

In some ways, nonfiction gave me an appreciation of fiction I don’t think I’d have developed otherwise. In fiction, I got to be more expressive, use some purple prose on occasion. My nonfiction was regulatory- or official policy-driven; it had to be cut-and-dried, no superfluous words or colorful phrasing. Though, that didn’t stop me from trying.

Once, I was writing a technical article for the FAA magazine about how hovering helicopters could get into a ground effect problem that could lead to an inadvertent lift-off, but if the pilot overcompensates, it puts the helicopter into a cyclical situation of lifting, settling, lifting, settling, each cycle more pronounced until it crashes. I decided that technical description was too dull, so I used a bit of license and said, “The helicopter beats itself to death on the ground.” Essentially correct, but way too “out there” for the technical experts reviewing the article for accuracy.

Even years later when I was responsible for rewriting all the handbooks used by FAA operations inspectors, in the introduction I wrote, “An aviation safety inspector’s duties can run the gamut from x to y.” Gamut means an entire scale or range. Yes, I could have used the word “range,” but I wanted to spice up an otherwise deadly dull and lengthy bit of prose with some “colorful metaphors.” The guy supervising the project thought I meant “gambit” and changed it to that. When I explained that “gambit” was by first definition a chess term that meant you sacrificed a pawn or some other piece to gain an advantage, he reacted, shall we say, negatively and said it was gambit or nothing. I changed gamut to range.

So, for me, nonfiction, at least the bureaucratic form, was constricting. When writing history or political science papers in college, I could be a bit more florid–as long as I had three sources to back it up.

Fiction, then, became the way to express the things that nonfiction in a bureaucracy tended to evade. You know, those pesky emotions. At times, though, I’d be instructed to “dumb down” the technical information to the point where it was almost infantilized. That didn’t sit well with me.

For example, after a well-known sports figure died in a plane crash, I was told to write the weekly reports to a congressman’s aide without using any aviation terminology at all. So, a wing became “the long, tapering structure on either side of the plane’s body (i.e., fuselage) that makes the plane go up into the air (i.e., fly).” Flaps became “door-like pieces of metal that help to slow the plane down.” Not entirely accurate for a pilot, mechanic, or aeronautical engineer, but you get the picture.

In a way, though, that exercise of dumbing down technical terms was great for my future fiction, even if annoying at the time.

Not long after my retirement from the FAA, my local newspaper contracted with me to write feature articles for the Sunday editions. I’d been a traditional reporter and knew that feature-writing was different from straight reporting, which was fact after fact after fact with no editorializing (allegedly). Feature writing, however, let me be a bit creative. I could appeal to emotion, and it helped me break out of the nonfiction mold and write better fiction.

And, of course, since I write historical fiction I can somewhat blend nonfiction with fiction in my stories, not to mention the fact I can use whatever word fits the scene or character or situation. Thank goodness I have an editor who appreciates that on occasion I use a word not commonly used but which fits what’s going on in the story. When I was a child reading above my grade level, I never minded having to stop and look up a word in the dictionary. (That’s considered a no-no in fiction; too bad.) That’s how I broadened my vocabulary and eventually could tell my mother to go stuff it without her understanding a word. Bad. I know.

I’m sure there are examples of scientists, let’s say, who’ve tried to write fiction and not succeeded and vice versa–fiction writers who’ve attempted to write a scholarly tome. Fiction and nonfiction are different and yet connected. As a fiction writer, count yourself lucky if you’ve had to do both. One will improve the other and help you understand which you choose to write.

All this leads up to my telling you that I’m working on a nonfiction book. I’m going to archive my blog posts from 2016 through 2023 as part of revamping my web site, but I’m going to compile some of them into a nonfiction book now tentatively titled, Writing, Spies, and Writing About Spies: A Collection of Essays, Blog Posts, and Musings. (It seems that nonfiction likes those wordy titles.)

The “writing, spies, and writing about spies” is part of the tagline for my “Real Spies, Real Lives Podcast,” but I realized in looking over my older blog posts, most fell under the broad headings of “writing” or “spies” or “writing about spies.”

It’s a working title, okay? (But I already have cover possibilities. Of course, I do.)

I need to, of course, fix typos I missed and do some tweaking to reflect how my characters and writing ability have grown over those seven years. I hope to show, in particular, in the “writing” section how the writing life can be high highs and low lows but that the ride is exhilarating.

You know, things I wish I’d known at the beginning.

Because I have several fiction irons in the writing fire, this nonfiction book won’t be out for a while. Indeed, it might just be my swan song.

Ha! How’s that for a cliffhanger?