buythebookMy wife, Melissa, had a consulting gig with Twitter in San Francisco from September 5-7. Now if anyone has stayed at Fisherman’s Wharf, you will understand why I was more than happy to carry her bags on this trip. As I run a recruiting business, on occasion, I can get by with a laptop and a cell phone. With a two hour difference in time zones, most of my work was done by 2:00pm PST. So what else could I do with my time, but write a book.

For those of you who know me, I had spent nearly three years writing Gig a historical fiction novel about a kid and his garage band growing up in the turbulent sixties. I had just finished my book, and was now waiting for answers to my agent queries. So I sat in our hotel room, thinking about the next project. Back in the early 2000’s, I had finished a musical called RIO. The story is basically Oliver meets West Side Story—a naïve American who vacations in Rio de Janeiro, falls in love, but his life crosses paths with a street kid who works for the local drug lord. I thought, with the Olympics scheduled there in 2016, I’ll write an updated novel!

I began doing my research. Back in the day of my musical, there was a true “bad guy” whose name I won’t reveal, but was whom I based my antagonist on. It turns out that right after I had finished my musical, this “bad guy” had been locked up for many years. The person he locked up wrote a book about it, and had become a celebrity cop! In further research, I found that “the bad guy” had escaped federal prison and that the celebrity cop was resigning his high profile post to work in an obscure, safe haven. WOW! This could be a great story.

Melissa had just returned to our hotel room, and I was busy corroborating my sources like any good reporter. Suddenly, my cell phone rang. It was from a reporter who advised me, “Be careful what you write about…”

Melissa, who supports me in everything I do, smiled sweetly and said, “It took me too long to find you. I don’t want to lose you over something like this story!”

“Then what should I be writing about?” I asked.

“You’re always such a romantic with me. Why don’t you write about something like dating for life?”

And as Paul Harvey used to say, “And that, folks, is the rest of the story!”

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