THIS PAGE GIVES A BRIEF LOOK AT THE STORY BEHIND THE STORIES.
THE MAN WHO LOVED HIS WIFE
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This story came to me in just three hours one Sunday morning. I got a flash of an idea and sat at my kitchen table to jot down a few notes. Those notes turned into an opening line, followed by paragraph after paragraph. Several times I got up with the intention of getting on with my morning chores. And the story would start flowing again. It did this to the end. I watched myself write it, which is to say I listened and simply took down dictation. If only all stories could come that way. But I do know where it came from and it had three sources, or triggers as writers call them. The week before I’d read a book entitled something like ‘Personality Profiles in Business at the Turn of the Century’, one of which dealt with the founder of a Sydney (Australia) Emporium. I’d watched a TV special on Tantric Sex – I’m interested in the Spiritual side of love. And I’d hired the Dennis Potter movie ‘Brimstone & Treacle’ in which a middle-aged couple leave their beautiful, comatose daughter in the care of a virile young man. Somewhere in my subconscious those three elements fused into ‘The Man Who Loved His Wife’.
ALWAYS THERE’S OMENS
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At a certain time in my life, I can’t remember when, I became aware of Omens. Fortunately, their appearance didn’t coincide with anything as tragic as what the woman in this story had to face – the loss of a son. But the three Omens cited in this piece actually happened to me: the ‘black beetle’ in the shower, the magpie mother-on-a-mission, and the dove in the storm water drain. It was the dove that made me write this story. It was an experience that wouldn’t let go until I’d written it down.
FIRST TIME, FIRST LOVE, AND SEGOVIA
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Though the disclaimer at the beginning of this story says none of the characters are real… Let’s say I tinkered with the characters so’s not to upset anyone, or get myself sued. This is one of the few stories I’ve written that is taken verbatim from my life. Usually I’m somewhere in my stories, but hiding so discretely only my dearest friends would know which part of a character is me, or which experience was mine. Alas, I couldn’t hide in this story or I wouldn’t have had a story to tell.
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