Goodreads asked Keith Jacobsen:

What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?

Keith Jacobsen There are mysteries in the life of my family to which I will never know the answers for sure, so writing can serve as a proxy for finding those answers. I can 'discover' them in fiction. I can ask my parents the questions I never dared to ask, and which they never would have answered. Of course, beyond a certain point it all becomes fictionalised, the characters take on their own very different qualities. So this is just a starting point. For example, I believe my late father was a closet homosexual. He would never have admitted it. But it would explain a great deal which has puzzled me over the years. In fiction I can make him admit what he would never have done in real life and make sense of it. This does not mean that the homosexual fathers in my books (there are 2 so far) are portraits of my father. The characters have their own distinct qualities. One of them is a good man, the other is not. But the existence of real and unsoluble mysteries in your past can lead to the creation of fictional mysteries and the plots whereby they are solved. A very good question if an imperfect anwer!

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