Thursday, March 1, 2012

How The Story Emerged -- Come Into The Light

To be given away an autographed print copy of Come Into The Light.

Authors often play the game of "what if." I know I do and that's how Come Into The Light began. There were stories in the local newspaper about the privatization of services at a local hospital. This started the motor running. I already had a character I wanted to feature in a book. She was the Director of Nursing at a hospital I'd used in another book. What if the CEO of the hospital was using this privatization to gain his own ends. Hospital politics are rather like politics elsewhere - convoluted to say the least. This heroine also fascinated me. She was past forty, had never been married, had a family background that had caused her to lose her first love. The next emergence was another what if. What if the first man returned to her life and what if he was ill. Sympathy would rattle her emotions, especially if she had also met a man who challenged her to step from the shadowy life she had been living.

The story unfolded with a lot of comments from my critique partners and was finally finished and published.

Now comes the fun part several of the situations I had dreamed up for the story had happened. Not at one hospital but at others in the area. I read with interest and decided sometimes playing what if can tune into something that's in the air. Hopefully you'll enjoy reading Come Into The Light and watch Johanna Gordon solve and dynamite the developing problems at her hospital. Also you'll learn how her decision about which man was taken.

5 comments:

  1. Very interesting. I often get little nudges to follow a news story to find material for a fiction story. As so happens frequently, life is stranger than fiction, and sometimes more convoluted, as well.
    Art imitating life is one the staples of a writer's world.
    PD

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  2. I positively love using "what ifs". My hubby and I play little games of what if when we are on road trips. It is amazing the stories that can come out of that one little question. I now HAVE to read Come Into The Light

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  3. I just love how you incorporated all of the Characters into one story. Very impressive. Thanks for sharing your excerpt. This book sounds like a very good read.

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  4. Interesting plot. A lot of stuff goes on in hospitals.

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