After hearing from my cousins just days before, I learned that my aunt (their mother) passed away this week. It was more than a little surreal. I hadn’t talked to any of my dad’s family in probably 25-30 years. I didn’t intentionally snub them, I just didn’t have anyone’s contact information to reach out to them. We don’t have a lot in common in a lot of respects, yet I grew up around my cousins. I was at my paternal grandmother’s every few weekends and my cousins lived there. It was my reprieve.
It was also awkward because of my non-relationship with my dad. How do you answer the inevitable comments like, “You must miss him”? I don’t miss him. He was mean, nasty, childish, selfish, and the list goes on. We won’t even get into the things he did to my brother and I when we were kids. He came across as a nice guy in public. Behind closed doors he was a bully and then some. My mother insisted it was her duty to stay with him, regardless of what it did to us kids. Her religious beliefs didn’t allow for divorce under any circumstances.
I debated pulling my book, doing a quick rewrite, then resubmitting it. I decided against it. I’ll never be 100% satisfied with it – that goes without saying – and it’s time to get going on book 2. Barring catastrophe there will NOT be a book 3, not in that series.
I have another story waiting in the wings, one in a completely different genre, one that’s been bugging me nearly as much as the monster I just published. It’s fact-based and requires me to do homework to get it right. I’m consulting old newspaper clippings and a friend from the region, both for historical accuracy and to get the cadence of the language correct. It’s centered in a part of the world that is unique in a number of ways, and I want to capture that in the way the story unfolds, because it’s integral to what happened. It is a story that carries a lot of poignancy, and I want to convey that without letting it become saccharine.
For the moment, though, the mundane calls. Time for a grocery-store run. Bleh.