Lia Basilien

Today I finally finished and published Chapter 4, “Max.” Max is one of the secondary characters in my book The Portal: First Era. And only now, late in the evening, I realized that today is March 1 — which means it’s his birthday!
          
          I made up his March 1 birthday sometime around 2004–2005 — I don’t remember exactly when. Since Max and his friends are entirely original, fictional characters, there was no need to change his name or birth date, unlike many of the others who are based on real people.
          
          Max hasn’t appeared in my fictional reality for a very long time (the last time was in 2013), but it feels deeply symbolic to me that it was exactly on March 1 that I finished a chapter named after him — and only later in the evening realized that today is his birthday :)

Today is my anniversary — I turned 30.
          
          Surprisingly, on this exact day, a certain person (the main heroine of my first book “The Portal: First Era” — her name is changed in the book) shared that she is about to have her first child, a boy.
          
          In my alternative reality, in the book I’m writing, she has long had a child — also a son. For some reason, I felt that in real life she was pregnant with a boy :)
          
          Of course, she will probably not give him the same name as her son in my fictional reality, but it still feels special ;)
          
          And that’s not all. Her post today about the upcoming birth was liked by a girl I know in real life — in my fictional reality, she is one of her best friends (her name is also changed there).
          
          Of course, they don’t know each other in real life: one is a public figure, and the other is simply someone I knew in the early 2000s. She isn’t even following her (though she used to), yet she still keeps track of her updates — since she liked today’s post.
          
          What a crazy day! I love it when these strange connections appear between my fictional reality and real life :)