#GuestPost ~ Gabriel Tait talks about writing about addiction honestly in his latest book, a Psychological Thriller #TuesdayBookBlog
I’m pleased to share Gabriel’s guest post….
How I Wrote About Addiction in Meeks
By Gabriel Tait
When I wrote my first novel, Meeks, I had to let a person I’d come to care about make a terrible mess of his life. I could have stepped in at any point. I was writing the book, after all. I think the hard part was leaving Ranleigh alone long enough to see what he would do.
Ranleigh Meeks is a character I made up. I fully understand how he gets himself into the mess he’s in, and that gave me a great deal of empathy for him. I could see why something that looked like a terrible idea from the safe distance of my cozy writing nook might look like the only thing that made sense to him right then and there. I wanted the reader to get close enough to see that as well.
I’ve been sober myself for 25 years. I’ve had my own experience with addiction and hitting rock bottom. Ranleigh’s story and my own follow a similar arc, though our lives are very different. I wanted to tell his story straight, as honestly as I’d want somebody to tell mine.
I also had to be careful about how much hindsight I gave him. Sobriety has given me a quarter century to look back and reflect on things that were totally beyond me then. Ranleigh is still in the middle of it all. If I gave him my perspective while he was making his decisions, it would ring false, and the reader would know it. I went back to those days when my addiction was still unfolding and I had no idea of the catastrophe that was waiting around the corner for me. As the writer, of course, I knew exactly where Ranleigh was headed. That was a bit tricky to pull off.
So I let it get bad. I let him make the next decision and live with what came of it. I wanted to stay close to him even when what he did made him harder to be around.
I’ve heard many stories of recovery, and I’ve known many people who didn’t make it. Between what I’ve lived through and what I’ve seen in other people’s lives, I suppose I got used to how bad it can get. It still shocks me when a reader tells me how harrowing parts of Meeks were to read. My first thought is usually, well, that’s par for the course.
Book: Meeks (psychological thriller / literary fiction; published September 14, 2023)
Set in Toronto in 1997, Meeks follows Ranleigh Meeks, a man trapped in a dead-end life who escapes into vivid dreams in which he is a successful novelist. As addiction tightens its grip, the line between the life he has and the life he imagines begins to disappear.
Gabriel Tait is an independent novelist based in Toronto. He began writing fiction at fifty and is the author of Meeks and The Ranleigh Tapes. His fiction explores addiction, identity and self-deception. He celebrated twenty-five years of sobriety in October 2026 and is writing Echo, the final book in the trilogy.
Author website: https://gabrieltait.com
Meeks on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203184079-meeks
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtaitbooks/
