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Writing The Elvis I Wish I Knew With Both Truth and Imagination
One of the most fascinating challenges in writing about Elvis Presley is deciding where the line sits between what happened and what might have happened. Anyone who has spent time with Elvis’s story knows how much of his life is already wrapped in myth, memory, and interpretation. Even the most rigorous biographies rely on recollections, interviews, and fragments of truth filtered through the people who loved him, worked with him, or simply watched him from afar.
When I began shaping The Elvis I Wish I Knew, I found myself returning to a simple question: how do you honour the real man while exploring the life he never had the chance to live?

The pull of biography

There is a deep satisfaction in working with real events - the Sun Studio days, the early friendships, the moments that shaped him long before fame became a burden. Books like Jerry Schilling’s Me and a Guy Named Elvis show how powerful those personal memories can be. They offer glimpses of Elvis not as an icon, but as a young man navigating sudden success, loyalty, and expectation.
Those truths matter. They anchor the story.

The freedom of fiction

But fiction allows something biography cannot: the ability to ask “What if?” without needing permission from history.
What if someone close enough, trusted enough, had been able to say “No” at the right moment? What if Elvis had taken a different path - not away from music, but away from the pressures that ultimately consumed him? What if the friendships that shaped his early life had included one more voice, one more influence, one more steady presence?
Fiction lets us explore the emotional truth behind those questions, even when the factual truth is fixed.

Walking the boundary

Writing this book meant walking a tightrope between authenticity and imagination. The events you’ll recognise — the football game in 1954, the early recordings, the whirlwind years — are treated with respect. But the story also steps deliberately into the unknown, into the version of Elvis who could have existed if life had bent just slightly in his favour.
It isn’t a biography. It isn’t pure fiction. It’s a conversation between the two - a tribute to the man he was, and a hope for the man he might have become.

If you’re curious…

If you enjoy stories that blend real history with alternative possibility, or if you’ve ever wondered how Elvis’s life might have unfolded with one different influence at the right moment, you may find something meaningful in The Elvis I Wish I Knew.
You can explore the book here on Written - and perhaps join me in imagining the version of Elvis who finally found peace.