There's a line between a bit of embellishing and just winging it completely. It's even more disingenuous when the story you've written doesn't even match up with your lifestyle. Can you imagine someone writing memoirs of being a pirate when they've never been out to sea? Or how about a war memoir based on the hours they spent playing 'Call of Duty' and 'SOCOM' and watching 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'Full Metal Jacket'?
Lot of folks question if the books were really that good, why not just publish them as fiction? Because they're obviously wouldn't stand on their own if they were fiction. Being raised by wolves is cute when you're Rudyard Kipling writing a children's tale, but when you're trying to compete with the likes of Dean Koontz or Stephen King or Tom Clancy, that just won't cut it. We're also less inclined to be critical because you assume that a non-fiction writer isn't going to be as well polished as a fiction writer so the inconsistencies and other things that we'd slam a fiction writer over get passed.
In the end, I still laugh at those who got suckered into their tales of woe.
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Cameron originally envisioned the Terminator as a small, unremarkable man, giving it the ability to blend in more easily. As a result, his first choice for the part was Lance Henriksen. O. J. Simpson was on the shortlist but Cameron did not think that such a nice guy could be a ruthless killer.
-From the Collector's Edition DVD of The Terminator
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