'Traces of You: Part the First'
‘So how’s the passion project?’
I liked Matt. I had liked him from the moment I had seen him at my local bar. I always used to get him mixed up with one of my old party friends. Same curly hair. Same Roman nose. Same quirky demeanor. It was years before I realized he was not my old party friend. Moreso because my party friend had a cool and FEMALE best friend versus his best friend who I could not stand.
Then Matt started to work at the local bar. So I was him more often. And we would talk books, tv shows, and movies. Of course I had mentioned that I was a self-published author. And while he had been fascinated at first, he appeared to be a different beast after the pandemic. At least…he was with me.
Outside of the anthology SHATTERED ILLUSIONS that I had done with my writer’s group, I had not published a book since DARKENED TABULA (Book 3 in the Darkened series) in 2020. That was a looong time for a writer to not have written anything. So perhaps it was Matt ribbing me with that fact.
But that did not make it hurt any less.
Passion project? Really? All the years we have sat at the bar counter and discussed my books, Pierce Brown, and the upcoming Dune, Matt thought that all I was doing was a passion project? Moreso since that was his greeting to me?
Moreso because…I WAS working on something.
But Are You Happy Then?
Well one cannot hate on Ryan Reynolds.
I remember when he was a boy named Billy on the Nickelodeon show Fifteen. But look at him now!! Married to the beautiful Blake Lively. Starred in the old Blade movie series. And of course, became the living embodiment of Deadpool in the X-men Universe.
Speaking of the Blade series, he once did an article in Best Life. And the main topic…happiness. He was just starting Blade: Trinity and thanks to the movie Van Wilder and his gift for comedy…he was slowly on the rise. So naturally a magazine asked his thoughts on happiness.
I remembered that article really resonating with me. So much so that I made a copy of the article (and a colored copy of the cover hehe). And I carried it with me. From Harlem to Little Rock to back to its ‘origin’ in San Diego. I still have the article…old pages and all!! That was how much it had touched me.
Sometimes when I was in between projects, I thought about that article. I took stock. How was I feeling? It was not too long ago (or was it?) that I had written a blog about expand, expand, expand in all ways. (Someplace That is... Else — New Dawn Rising: 3 Lessons to Take into 2021 from... (tumblr.com) ) But just thinking about it…was I?
The world had adjusted to the pandemic a while ago. Corona was still running around. However, it was still possible to have a life. And I could have gotten back in the swing of things myself. Not only did I have research to do for my forthcoming novel DARKENED SOUL: THE BREAKING OF CIRCLES, but I had most of a YA sci-fi novel written. And did I even have to mention Book 4 in my Darkened series. And yet…I had no focus.
Not true. I had focus. It was all on my jobs though. To that, I had to shake my head. I had worked hard to make room for my growing writing dreams and goals. Now I was back to That Guy. That Guy whom mind stayed on work, work, and more work rather than focus on his dreams or even living. That Guy who I thought I had grown out of during the pandemic. Guess not.
Perhaps that was why Matt made fun of me. Passion project? Hobby? Not when was my next book coming out. Just not treating what I hoped to be a growing career as just that…a career.
Was he right?
THE CASE FOR HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES…NEW BOOK, NEW DIRECTION…?
My friend Mr. Moore had always wanted me to write.
He always loved my novels. He also supported me as I worked hard to keep my focus on writing. And while he loved all my books, Mr. Moore always felt like I was just scratching the surface of what I could be writing.
He always felt that as a gay black author from the South, I had a unique perspective that I hardly ever used in my writing. It made me think of so many of my English teachers in school. They all felt that I had the talent. That I had the potential. However, they all gave me a look or a frown when I said I wanted to write horror. One even wrote on one of my short stories. He loved the writing, but felt the story was trite. WOW.
Besides E. Lynn Harris…another author of Arkansas…held the market in that particular arena. And I didn’t think anything else about it.
Then…Mr. Moore succumbed to cancer.
For him, it was January 2020. For me, it was March 2020. As the world dealt with the pandemic. As San Diego went into lockdown, I found out that my closest friend had passed. Not only that, the funeral had come and gone. I could only imagine how his boyfriend felt.
The world got back to normal. It went back. And I…found my mind going back to HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES. I had tried various times to work on it throughout the years. And I would get writer’s block in the exact same spot.
I missed my friend. I never truly got to mourn my friend. He never got to see how successful I could be as an author. I never got to show him how I could write something different. So it was that I started to work on HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES again. Anxiety slowly cropped up as I neared the same spot that I always got to where the writer’s block hit.
Perhaps it was the process of coping with my friend’s death that got the words to flow. Perhaps it was Matt’s voice in my head about my ‘Passion Project.’ Perhaps it was just feeling my emotions close to the surface. Whatever the reason, I arrived at the moment where main character Shaun told the truth. The moment that everything went into writer’s block mode.
And…I kept going past it.
I was shocked the next day when it happened. The way the words kept going as my pencil crafted them out on paper. After all this time, I was going to see what happened next.
Finally.
After writing nothing but supernatural cross-genre stories, I embraced writing something different…the quirky gay novel.
HELLO, I’M MIRROR.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.
After all, it was not the first time my characters had done it to me.
As I mentioned, I had tried various times to write HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES. And when I’ve been working on it, I had thought about other storylines and subplots to bring into the story. There was one plot device that I had wanted to throw in in a few versions that I’ve written. It involved Shaun making a potential mistake with his close friend Trey. A simple plot twist to up the emotional stakes.
It felt like a great idea to use in this novel. And the steering toward that plot twist gave my novel a firm direction after the initial reveal of Shaun’s confession to potential love interest Eric. Meanwhile, his friend Trey had a subplot involving a closeted up-and-coming rapper. So it was a matter of growing their friendship and exploring it. And then having their lives fall apart at the same time. And then plot twist. Followed by aftermath as well as new building tension.
What I did not expect was how much the aftermath of said plot twist reflected a dilemma in my own personal life. Once my characters started to voice familiar words that I wrote, I found myself pausing. It felt like being slapped in the face, shock striking my body.
I had similar experiences with DARKCHILDE, the second book in my DARKENED series. I also had a lot of moments like this in my novel DARKENED SOUL: JONATHAN’S TALE. And now here I was with HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES.
Mirroring.
Meh. I disliked when my characters’ lives seem to mirror or mimic what was going on in my own personal life. I did not intend for that to occur. And I definitely did not go searching for that to happen. And yet, there it was on the page in front of me.
I put my pencil down. That was not what I was expecting. I wanted my characters to act the way they were supposed to. And I also had my ending planned out.
But this curveball…was not expected. My characters mirroring my life.
And I…didn’t like what I saw.
TO BE CONTINUED…
