When Fiction Finds Its Muse After the Fact

A depiction of what Kelly Moore might look like. © 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados

 I didn’t set out to write Leigh E. into Comings and Goings. Truthfully, I didn’t realize I had—until yesterday.

Kelly Moore, as she lives on the page, was always her own person: emotionally fluent, quietly confident, and possessed of that rare wit that doesn’t clamor for attention—it simply belongs. But as I revisited a particular scene, something shifted. A flicker of recognition. The cadence of her voice, the way she occupies space without needing to claim it… these weren’t conjured. They were remembered.

Leigh and I have been friends for over two decades. Southern, adventurous, whip-smart, and beautiful in that unassuming way that makes you feel lucky just to know her—she’s been a quiet constant in my life. I sent her a message, a little sheepish, with an excerpt from the book. She read it and replied, “LOL, yep, that’s me!” And just like that, fiction folded back into life.

A few minutes later, she sent me a screenshot: the epigraph from Comings and Goings, that line from Summer of ’42—“Life is a series of comings and goings.” She’d bought the Kindle edition. Not out of obligation, but because something in those words felt familiar. Felt true.

There’s a quiet magic in moments like this. When a character you thought you’d invented turns out to be someone you’ve known all along. When a friend sees herself in your work and welcomes it—not with surprise, but with joy. When fiction doesn’t just echo memory, but finds its muse in real time.

Kelly Moore will always be her own character. But now, she carries a little more of Leigh’s light. And that makes the story feel even more like home.