When I read the book Life of Pi, for the first hundred pages or so, I thought it was a memoir. It wasn’t until the protagonist reached the carnivorous island that I flipped to the front and found the words A NOVEL clearly printed on the cover. Ha! I thought. How embarrassing. I continued to enjoy the book, but not quite as much as I had when I’d thought it was real.

Years later, my husband looked up from the book he was reading and said, “Did you know there was a type of dinosaur that had language and used tools for hunting?”

“What?” I replied. “Where’d you hear that?”

He turned his book – Evolution – to face me, and I pointed at the words A NOVEL on the cover. We had a good laugh. He’d already heard the Life of Pi story, so he knew he was in good company.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been working on a revision of the first book of Aret. Going through it again reminds me of the days when Dad was the book’s chief critic and grilled me continually about wording and plot points. One of my favorite memories from that era was when he took exception to the protagonist’s employment.

Dad: “Why is Diana a carpenter’s apprentice? Isn’t that weird?”

Me: “Women go into carpentry, Dad. One of my closest girlfriends in Oregon is a journeyman carpenter.”

Dad: “But shouldn’t Diana be something else? It just doesn’t seem realistic.”

<Moment of silence in my parents’ kitchen>

Mom: “Isn’t this book about dragons?”

Me: “Yes.”

Mom: “With people turning into dragons and dragons turning into people and everybody flying around between different worlds?”

Dad and Me: “Yes.”

Mom: “And that’s the part you find unrealistic?”

As I began this latest revision with Dad’s voice echoing in my head, I briefly considered changing Diana’s employment to something more ordinary. But then I remembered, if readers aren’t tipped off by the dragons or species transformations or the travels between worlds, they’ll still have that helpful A NOVEL designation on the cover to serve as their guide.

Oh! It’s fiction. Got it. That explains the carpenter thing.