A Big Surprise... and Another After I got through with the first two chapters of the novel I am working on, I thought I'd give myself a break and read my favorite kind of book. It's a novel based on an actual event that actually happened to a real, real, actual person, but the version I'm reading isn't the straight-from-the-facts version, and neither is mine. I'm reading what I like to call a romanticized version of the true event. So, while driving up to Santa Barbara on Sunday, I had a lot of time to think. In fact, it occurred to me, in a serious moment of reflection, that I've never been able to make that many decisions. But I found a reason to keep it that way. Because, you know, life. We have to be able to make choices, we're told. We have to do so much in our day. It's important that we can handle all of it. Right? So, my thinking was, I can't always make the right choice. And the more I can't, the more I will stay put. To get myself out of the state of stuckness, the more important it is for me to be able to make a choice. To be able to decide things for myself. And that's not going to happen if I can't. So... there's my reason for never deciding anything. Just so we're clear. And I decided the novel should be made up of four parts. The first one deals with the murder and how she got the name. The second will be made up of the story I just told. The third will be a story about the author dealing with the aftermath of her brother's death, and the fourth part will be about that same author after she gets back from her trip in Italy. Or maybe it will be four parts in reverse order. Okay, it's not so important right now. I can start by typing up my notes and see how the thing is going to go. Friday, November 28, 2008 A Big Surprise... and Another I had a big, big surprise in doing the reading I've been doing in my morning pages. The book I'm working on, at the moment, is about a murder that took place in Santa Barbara back in 1949, when I was about 8. I had no idea about it then, obviously, but the story I'm telling right now is about my parents (I won't give away who they are). They'd had a very violent marriage, and when the murder happened in the story, they'd had a terrible fight. I was sent off to a small beach town for safety while they tried to work out their differences and make a go of their marriage. (As an aside, there were children involved in that marriage and it didn't succeed. The kids grew up and grew old. I think the kids are now around 52 and 60.) Anyway. On this morning's pages, I got through the first two chapters and realized, suddenly, that this murder was not so much an accident as a suicide. My mother didn't understand why, and after a horrible fight that she lost, she killed herself. And my father was charged with it and sent to prison. Even worse than that, she had a gun and used it to kill herself, so that my father had to stand trial for murder. He was found not guilty and released from prison after a year of detention. And then he did the same thing to himself as she had done, but he did it by driving off a cliff in his truck. Oh my God! Now, there's more to the story, all of it much worse than what I've just told you, but what has happened to me is that I had been sitting in a waiting room somewhere, and it was one of those waiting rooms where people take turns reading their little paperbacks. And one of the people before me had a book about a man who killed himself because of some awful secret. When he died, he took all the secrets with him and they went with him to hell, and there were other people there who were suffering and they were telling us, in detail, about their suffering. And that was the worst moment in my life. It was horrible, and it upset me so much I had to leave. But that was what I had gone in there for. I had felt I needed to know how awful it could be to suffer like that. So, here's what I'm thinking of doing now. For today, anyway, because I'm still in the initial shock of seeing this awful connection between what my parents did with the murder and the suicide/suicide that I had read about. My protagonist will have to become fascinated by the murder and the suicide and want to write a book about them. And her research will reveal that I wrote the book, that she was my mother, and that I had killed myself after going through hell because I was so upset at having killed myself. And she will be a detective and will find out that I didn't kill myself at all, but that someone else had done it. But because I never found out who it was, she will have to decide how to save my life and maybe get myself back. It sounds complicated, and I'm really only just now beginning to see the things that could come into this novel about this one event. That's always what happens with me. When I start something, I seem to want to rush ahead, and I never take the time I need to fully visualize what will happen. But that's why I'm going to take time to think it through now, when I'm in the mood for it. My new book! About Me I'm a writer and editor living in Pennsylvania. My books are listed below; you can click on the covers to read reviews and keep up with the events in my life. (Not everything is on there, since I keep a lot of things to myself.) My romantic suspense novel is now on the shelves at Target, you can check it out here. I'm also getting a new web series started. The Adventures of Me! Follow me on Twitter: @V_Cohen.