Chapter 1. Our story begins with two stories. The first is about someone we might consider to be a hero, a kind of superhero who may not have superpowers, but who saves the day anyway. He also happens to have some seriously dark family secrets, and we begin to wonder if he can be trusted to live up to his own code of ethics. The second is about a couple who are trapped in a loveless marriage. Each day they must find ways to communicate with one another without using the same five-letter words. They try, but it just seems to get worse. A little later in the story we have an older couple, the parents of one of the characters in the first story, whose relationship with one another is less than loving. They have stopped pretending and actually live by the motto, “love conquers all.” These four stories are not all that different from one another, each character fighting to survive in the unforgiving world of the dysfunctional family, the only real world we have. A lot of the time this is the only world we have to live in, if we are honest with ourselves. This is also the only world we can try to change. But do we really want to change it?
The stories in this book were generated by real family and personal histories that the author collected over a period of many years. There are people in them who are not necessarily the people they were but they have been changed by their histories and circumstances and often become much less than they were in their original incarnations. It may be a true story but it is also a fiction told in the first person.
A quick synopsis of what this novel is not:
1) It is not necessarily a book about dysfunctional families as much as a group of people who are lost, disoriented and who need to figure things out for themselves. Even though they are fictional people, they are just as real and complex as any fictional characters I’ve written.
2) It is not simply a tale about a dysfunctional family and it is not simply a story about a young man coming to terms with his past or one woman realizing the errors of her ways and breaking free of the tyranny of her controlling husband. A dysfunctional family is not necessarily a disaster. It may be a disaster but it is also something more if it is being confronted in an honest and forthright manner.
3) It is not a book of secrets, other people’s secrets, just because I am not a reporter and do not have access to the inner workings of other people’s lives.
4) Lastly, it is not about murder. If there are any hints of murder in the book, it is simply an allusion, a sort of foreshadowing of what might or might not have happened in real life. If someone were to take this novel seriously, they could misinterpret a scene as a mystery when, in fact, it is just a clever way to get a reader to stop and think.
The writing style is a little different this time around, so I wanted to explain some of the techniques I used to get the book written. I was born in Canada but raised for much of my life in the southern United States, though it would be uncharacteristic of me to say that in just a couple of sentences. There are some characters in this book who are Canadians who live in the southern United States, so there are similarities to many lives I have personally witnessed or encountered, which is why this was an easy book to write. For the most part, what you are reading here is a combination of what I have experienced and seen and what I have created from all of this. The style, I think, makes it more comfortable to read than I usually write. But I hope there are stories here that are meaningful and relevant to someone out there, because writing stories that matter to us can have a positive impact on our lives. There is no real mystery in how to write a good book. You need to know the stories that are in you and how to develop them. Once you find your voice, you will have more fun. There is nothing to worry about. I always have fun with my stories and this one was no exception.
Chapter 2.
CHAPTER 2
The story begins with our narrator looking out his window and noticing that it is raining. This is also the first time we see him face to face, because up to now he has been a voice only. His past was once a nightmare but the past is now no longer a mystery to him. He is not who he used to be. Instead of remembering it all the way through his entire life, this story will be told to him as he is writing it down. He’s in his early twenties, he grew up in a small town on the other side of the state, an hour away from his family. He remembers going to visit his grandparents when he was young, his mother more recently. This is not a story for those who are into details, the kind of detail that turns a page into a maze that you have to figure out to find your way back to the story at hand. The people in this story are not always who we think they are and we will need to discover for ourselves how that is possible.
We find out that this young man was molested by a man who worked at a place called the “clubhouse,” a private home that had an important part in his childhood. These are all his memories, his personal history of how he grew up. It is a time when he started to remember things and some of the things he remembered came from a place in the world that he didn’t want to go back to, even though he couldn’t remember what happened to him there or where he was sent. The story is told from his point of view but there are other characters and their stories will be interwoven with this one, as well. That way, we can come to understand the world this young man is trying to come to terms with, the world he lives in and from which he attempts to find his way out. This is not a simple task but it is a task he begins, slowly and with much resistance.
This story begins with a child, who one might assume is being molested, being taken from the place he used to live. His father is trying to find him so that he can deal with what he knows he has been up to, the things he’s been doing, the things he may have taught him. The boy is trying to protect himself, not from his father but from the man with the gun. He has his father to protect him and he knows it.
This story is not a narrative about sex and violence or abuse, though there is some of that here. It is more about how a person is molded by their environment. The boy will begin to see the world from a different perspective after he is molested, after the man takes him into his secret world.
Some more things to know:
1) What I am trying to do is to write a story that could be based on someone’s personal experiences, but the story will be about them. It is not possible to write a story about something unless you have experienced it. At some point, the reader must be able to see through the narrator’s eyes, hear his words, and feel his pain. That’s the extent of what the reader can see and experience in the story. The reader can’t control the narrator’s pain or memories, the memories themselves or the way the narrator thinks or feels, but the narrator has control of these things for the most part, though he can’t even control his own thoughts at times. So, in the end, a story really is about the person telling the story.
2) There is a lot of dialogue in this story but there is almost no speech at all, mostly because there are not real people sitting around a table having a casual discussion. Instead of dialogue, there are characters who are talking to themselves, wondering about their own life, wondering about what may have happened to them, who they used to be. One can write an entire novel based on someone’s dreams but most of us don’t really sleep or dream very much, so we would have to have many stories to tell to make this interesting. The story can only be about one dream, and that is not a good place to begin. The memories and pain are real but can only be made to seem as if they are someone else’s problems.
3) What we are really reading in this story is not a diary. It is not really a piece of autobiographical fiction either. These stories are not autobiographical, they are character stories, but they are not completely fictional characters either, even though the story is fictional. This is a story about a memory, a memory that is based on an event that might or might not have actually happened to a real person. It is up to the reader to decide how real this story is. For the most part, this is what it is about. We can’t make decisions for someone else, only for ourselves. This is about finding a way to make sense of the past. At this point, the narrative is like this person’s version of what really happened in their past. The real truth of the matter is no longer important to them. And that’s how it should be.
4) There is a lot of suspense in this story. There is a reason why there is suspense. If the suspense were resolved, it would be a different kind of story. If the ending is not as good as the rest of the story
