June 11, 2017 - Escaping the Rain

Escaping the Rain

For three days, I had been cooped up in my apartment, listening to the rain.  The temperature had dropped to below 60 and a cold south wind would not stop blowing in more rain.  All my windows were shut tight, but still I was cold.  I spent most of my time wrapped in a blanket.

I had to get out!

The three days weren’t a complete loss.  I worked on Onesimus, putting on the finishing touches in a few places, adding a bibliography and table of contents, and getting it ready for a friend who is editing it for me.  Surprisingly, finishing a novel doesn’t feel like a relief.  It took me a while to verbalize it, but it is a bit like a parent watching their child graduate from high school.  You know the kid will soon be gone forever.

For a few weeks, my next novel has been rummaging around in my head.  I would be working on a scene in Onesimus and would stop to write an idea for my next novel.

Today, sick of the rain, I decided to go for a walk and maybe get something to eat.  I got two blocks before the rain began again, but I made it to the Mandarin Restaurant on Iralá, without getting too wet.  After eating rice, beans, and leftover concoctions, I was hungry for some good Chinese food.  Sitting there during the crowded lunch service gave me an idea for a scene.

Maybe you are wondering about my next novel.  It will be called Remembering Sorrento, a name I’ve had for decades.  It came about unexpectantly in 2012, though parts of it I have been writing since the 1990s.  The oldest part, and where I get the title, came from a high school trip to Italy.  One event at the end of the trip is what I am centering upon.  The newest part came from a trip I took to Barcelona in 2011.  The introduction to the novel comes from a dream I had in 1999 about some kids in my class.  Luckily, when I woke up, I wrote down the dream.  

Each of those I was developing into separate novels.  In the fall of 2013, I suddenly saw them as one novel.  I put the novel aside in 2013 when I had a foreign exchange student come to live with me, and then a second one.  When I came here to Bolivia, it was my plan to write this novel second.  Onesimus and Mojon con Cara had different plans.  

So what was the scene I envisioned?  The protagonist of my novel is an artist.  One day, he is sitting in a crowded restaurant in Barcelona.  Two children are fighting, but they aren’t from the same family or even sitting near each other.  Though the entire restaurant is disturbed by the children, neither set of parents seem to care.  The protagonist notices a man writing feverishly on the other side of the restaurant, apparently about the noisy children.  The protagonist then proceeds to sketch the writer. 

All that came from watching a scene just like that at the Mandarin Restaurant in Santa Cruz.  

It is about that far along, but if you buy the book one day, you will find that scene.

For now, I need to go back to writing.

Link to my novels