Twenty-plus years ago, after I’d self-published Guilty as Sin and before I started to pen the Persona Non Grata trilogy, I was talking to a casual friend at the gym, telling him about wanting to write another novel. Curious and intrigued by my avocation, he asked me what I’d like to write about next. I hadn’t the slightest idea at the time, though I knew it would have to revolve around a strong female protagonist who didn’t take crap from anyone! He had smiled and nodded his head, understanding my need to express my latent inner toughness. He’d already witnessed my physical strength.
“Why don’t you write about yourself?” he’d suggested, as if that were the most natural thing for me to consider.
“Write about me? I can’t write about myself,” I had humbly said. “That would be too weird. And kind of narcissistic.”
“Not at all. Who knows your story better than you do?”
“But who would want to read it?”
“I would,” he’d said, smiling again. “And I’m sure lots of people would, too. You’ve had such an interesting life.”
He wasn’t wrong about my life being “interesting,” though I’d prefer to use the word unusual. Or, out of the ordinary. Since then, so much more has been added to my interesting life. Going back to the beginning, and likely what laid the foundation for my out-of-the-ordinary life, was the fact I’d already travelled the world by the age of 6, when my father took a Sabbatical from teaching Junior High School history and social studies. For the next school year, my sister, my parents and I lived in Jerusalem, Israel, visiting much of western Europe going and coming. Overall, the experience was an invaluable education in language, geography and world cultures. My dad repeated the Sabbatical seven years later, duplicating the locations with a few new countries in Europe thrown into the mix. At that time, I was a 15-year-old coming of age. I’m certain those two adventures were the catalyst for my wanderlust as an adult.
Recreation
For some reason, I thought about my long-lost gym friend the other day, wondering if I should finally heed his advice and write about myself. At my stage in life, it’d be closer to writing an autobiography, and that sounds like an enormous and overwhelming undertaking. It also seems exciting and challenging. With a wealth of wonderful worldly experiences, I often feel like I’ve lived more than one life: each decade affording something new and unique. Aside from traveling, I have changed careers a few times over the span of 40-plus years. While that may sound whacky and unstable to some, I believe it provided me the opportunity to learn new disciplines and become a “Jill of all Trades” in a way. I was able to continually recreate myself and, in the process, stay youthful in spirit. When people, including my own friends, express fear that ageism prevents them from getting a job after a certain age, I refuse to buy into that model. Instinctively, I forge ahead, sustaining an innovative mindset, cultivating creativity in trying something new and fulfilling.
At the time my gym friend suggested I write about myself, I was employed as a staff writer and editor at a California-focused outdoor sports publication that produced a monthly magazine and two weekly newspaper editions: one for the south and the other for the north. Most of the content of both the newspaper and magazine was devoted to fishing, with a slightly less spotlight on hunting. While I was neither an angler nor a hunter, I had great enthusiasm for the outdoors, and believe they hired me because I was a good writer. Additionally, they liked that I focused my stories on sportswomen, something they recognized had been missing from both periodicals. So, you can see why my friend thought I had an interesting life. I was probably the only person he’d ever met who wrote about outdoor sports.
Unusual Pursuits
Those were some of the happiest times in my life. Seeking out sportswomen—sometimes tagging along with them over the course of a weekend as they pursued their passions. Some were world-class, long-range anglers who loved the challenge of reeling in a 130-pound Pacific bluefin tuna off Baja California or a 200-pound halibut from the frigid waters of Alaska. Others were avid bowhunters, tracking the over-abundant wild boar in Central California or bull elk in New Mexico.
It was not an easy job but thoroughly rewarding. I was vicariously experiencing that lifestyle through these women. Still, even as a non-participant, I had to pay my dues. Like the time the organizer of one of these hunting trips left me alone in the field in the dark to find my way back to the meet-up point. At times, I felt like a fifth wheel, following the women through the chamise plants, waiting for that wily wild boar to show its face. But when that boar did appear, I felt my adrenaline kick into high gear. I felt proud of the huntress when her arrow pierced the pig’s thick armor between the shoulder blades. In that instant, I came to appreciate the dedication and hard work involved in these pursuits.
The problem with writing about myself would be in condensing and compartmentalizing chunks of my life because as it stands now, this book would be longer than War and Peace. Not that I’m comparing myself to Leo Tolstoy, though my son is Russian, so we have that in common. My husband and I adopted him from an orphanage in Vladivostok in 2007. And that’s another story, and a huge part of my life. You can bet your bottom dollar my son’s story will play a big part in that upcoming book I will eventually write.