Because Randy and I have moved so many times over the years, mainly compliments of the US Air Force, we’ve made lots and lots (and lots) of friends.
Many of them live all over the country and one of our greatest joys is that we have the means to visit and reconnect with them in person occasionally. I’ve written about what friendship means to me in this blog before. You can read it here.
But I have a class of friends I’ve never written about before.
I often laugh, and cry, with these friends. I can’t wait to hear about their latest adventures. I am incensed when they are “done wrong.” I sometimes lay in bed at night thinking about their situations and if there’s anything I can do to help. And how the rest of their story is going to be affected. Sometimes I just can’t get them out of my head! And when I’m tired and need to sleep, that just ticks me off.
You see, these people aren’t real. They’re characters in books I enjoy. A lot. Probably too much.
For nearly 11 years I’ve keep a spreadsheet each year of the books I’ve read. So far, the total is 580 books (202,877 pages). You get to know a lot of people that way. It’s true that there are some whom I don’t care if I ever encounter again, but there are quite a few to whom I’ve become rather attached.
My favorite faux friends of all time are Claire Randall and Jamie Fraser (pictured above) from the Outlander series of books. There are 9 books in that series, starting when Claire was a nurse in 1946, to when they met in Scotland in 1743 through the magic of time travel, and all the intervening years (some in the 1960s) until 1779 where the latest installment of their life together takes place in the most current book. Confusing, yes, but don’t judge. These people and their stories and adventures, emotions and trials are incredibly interesting. Even Randy’s read all 9 books and become friends with them as well.
Claire and Jamie and their family and foes are the most complex folks I’ve ever had the pleasure to get to know. Every detail of their lives has been recorded by a most imaginative and smart novelist named Diana Gabaldon. This series has such a cult-like following that Starz has adapted the books for television, and those shows are hugely successful. In my opinion, the books are better, and allow you to use your own imagination to fill in the few gaps Gabaldon leaves for you.
I’m a huge fan of series fiction and I love Juan Cabrillo and his crew from Clive Cussler’s The Oregon Files. I regret I’ll never get a chance to actually tour the ship and meet the crew. Mel Monroe and Jack Sheridan and all the folks their lives are intertwined with in the fictional town of Virgin River delighted me for years through the 20-book series by Robyn Carr. Linda Lael Miller wrote several series centered about different families that I got to know and love well. For a long time, I enjoyed reading series with heroes like Mitch Rapp, written by Vince Flynn, and Scot Harvath, written by Brad Thor.
When I moved to Florida bumped into Doc Ford, a likeable marine biologist who lives on Sanibel Island, but has a secret life working for a clandestine government agency when necessary. We stopped to eat at Doc Ford’s Rum Bar and Grille on Sanibel Island a couple of years ago and racks and racks of his books were the first thing I noticed before we got to the hostess station. Author Randy Wayne White (who either owns or is a partner in the chain of Doc Ford’s Rum Bars here In SW Florida) has, to date, written 26 books in the Doc Ford series. I’m currently reading #25. The early volumes had more violence than I like to know about in the lives of my best friends, but there’s so much background information about this SW Florida area woven into the stories, that I kept reading. And I really, really, really like Doc and want to keep up with his life. Right now, he might be in love, maybe for the very first time. No…I take that back. I think he was in love a very long time ago with a woman he absolutely could never have and who turned out to be a shit anyway, so it’s probably all working out the way it should.
My newest best friends are Maddie, Avery, and Nikki. These 3 strangers were unexpectedly thrown into each other’s orbit by a conman who stole their life savings. Through sheer will and remarkable grit they rebuilt their lives and became fast friends and better people because of the experience. Their stories are told through 6+ super enjoyable novels collectively called the Ten Beach Road series by Wendy Wax. I need to write Wendy Wax and beg her for a new installment. Or maybe I can just go up to Pass-A-Grille, a real neighborhood in St Petersburg, just up the road from me where the novels are set and see what’s going on with them for myself. I so wish I could do that. Wax lives up that way too.
I have no doubt I’m going to acquire countless additional best friends over the years who I’ll never have the chance to meet in real life. What a joy it is to be able to share their lives with them for a little while. I salute the effort of talented authors who create multidimensional characters who never actually draw breath but who live in my imagination anyway.
P.S. Randy and I are working on making some real, new, living and breathing friends. It’s amazing how social media can connect you with people who share your interests and are willing to tell you their own stories.
Leave a Reply