Blog Daddy's Dead Book

I had to face facts. My book died. It wasn't my fault. There was nothing I could do. I had thirty chapters outlined and six completely written. There was a fire inside me. It was fueled by anger and indescribable pain. I was on a roll. The book was almost writing itself. Then it happened. My dad had a heart attack. Thankfully he lived, but the book died.

There have been plenty of books written wherein the author proceeds to tell the world how terrible his childhood was and that his parents were the reason he grew up to be so miserable and maladjusted. My book wasn't exactly like that. It was a mystery. It was a fictionalized account of my relationship with my father. It also had several chapters about the life of a child growing up in a small river town in Missouri (apologies to Mark Twain). It had a lot of elements of truth in it, but it contained a lot of elements of my imagination as well. It was to be published, marketed, and sold as a work of fiction. The names were all changed, but it was based on the real people in my life.

I began writing the book as a form of therapy. As some of you already know, something pretty awful happened between my father and me this past year. It was bad enough that we didn't speak for months and had no plans to do so in the forseeable future. To me, it was the culmination in a series of life changing events that took place between us that threatened to end our relationship for good. Writing the book helped me sort through a lot of those feelings and motivated me to make something positive come out of a big negative. Was I worried about how it would affect my dad and the rest of my family? Only slightly. I believed that the pain I was in and the relief the writing process gave me far outweighed the pain it may have caused my family. Besides all that, it was one helluva story. You can't make this kind of stuff up! As friends have told me for years, "You need to write about your life's story- its better than a soap opera!" In my case, the truth IS stranger than fiction, and a lot more dramatic.

But as I said, my dad had a heart attack while I was in the process of spinning my tale. Real life had once again thrown me a very dramatic curveball. Afterall, Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans. Visiting Dad in the emergency room, I knew the book was over. I was able to see him as a vulnerable human being again- complete with fears, pains, hopes, and regrets just like the rest of us. Don't get me wrong, I was still hurt by what he had done. However, the anger that fueled me was fading away. The book really wasn't just a "Look how terrible my dad was to me" tell-all. It had anecdotes about us fishing when I was a kid and such. But it was a brutally honest account of how the things that went right and wrong in our relationship affected me and still affect me today. You would have laughed and cried while reading it. It was a mystery novel as well as a cautionary tale of how easy it is to hurt your family. I think I could write three or four other books based on some of the elements in it. I may still write about the relationship between a father and son. I may still write a mystery based on the incident that drove us apart (It was a doozie!). I may still write a story of childhood innocence in the spirit of "Stand by Me" or "The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn." But for now, I'll stick with blogging to keep the creative juices flowing.

You will read a book written by me some day, I promise. There are too many voices in my head and I can't keep them quiet for long. Until then keep reading this blog, which has turned into a pretty interesting account of my life in its own right. How many other people do you know who live their lives outloud for all the world's amusement? (Nick & Jessica and Kevin & Brittany do NOT count!)