In The Beginning (part 1)

I’ve been trying to figure out how to start talking about my next release, LoveLife.  It’s kind of incredible to me how the whole thing came about, but really that’s also the issue with telling the story. The whole thing is kind of incredible.  It’s a rather wandering tale of events that will ultimately make an otherwise level-headed boi look like a new-agey, la la, creepy stalker before it all turns out in the wash.  It’s taken me weeks of trying to come up with a way to do this concisely and not look crazy in the process, but alas, the short and clean version of the story sounds trite and doesn’t convey my sense of wonder at the actual sequence of events, so in the name of art I’ve decided to give you the full story in ego-crushing detail.

It was late April of 2010, and Georgia Beers and I were in a deep discussion of  beautiful women our craft. You see Georgia had just gotten in touch with Erin Cummings and was all about contacting women who inspire us (see the full story).  She may have asked who my current crush was, or maybe I volunteered (We  share obsessive qualities, and it’s often hard to tell who started what).  Either way, I brought up the fact that I’d just watched Loving Annabelle multiple times and was crushing pretty hard on Simone, as played by Diane Gaidry.  Georgia found that very fitting (she’s familiar with my teacher fetish) and said she’d actually met Diane at a film festival.  According to Georgia’s report, aside from being exactly my type, Diane was also smart and very sweet, which pretty much did me in. I couldn’t help myself. I decided to do some cyber stalking research.

I went to the Google expecting to find other Diane Gaidry movies. Instead, I found that Diane was now working as a life coach just up the road from me in Buffalo. Internal warning bells sounded, Step away from the computer. Obsession reaching critical levels. *Do not click on any more links.*  So I did what any strong, self-assured boi would do and asked Georgia what I should do.  Georgia, being a cool, level-headed, solid influence in my life said. “You have got to call her!”

No no no, I needed to back away, stop cyber stalking, stop talking to Georgia, and work on my book about a priest.  However, it turns out my priest character is a bad influence too, because she would not cooperate.  No matter what I wrote, she felt disjointed and disconnected, and no matter what character sketch I used, the woman I had in my head would not show up on the page. I was having a wretched time developing her as a character (There’s a lot of pressure when writing a priest).  I just needed to take a little break and watch Loving Annabelle again.

That night in a moment of weakness, I snuck back to Diane’s Life Coaching website, only this time I did less looking at pictures and more reading about life coaching.  I didn’t even really know what a life coach was. It sounded kind of fru-fru to me.  The Midwesterner in me rolled her eyes several times, but the idea of helping align values with actions and finding someone’s true path sounded like an interesting character development activity. Actually, the more I read, the less fruity it all seemed. Life coaching started to sound like exactly the kind of thing my priest character needed. Even at 2 am, I was self-aware enough to realize that I was contemplating putting a fictional character through life coaching, which was a particular brand of crazy I hadn’t yet encountered in myself, and it worried me.

I decided to be completely stoic and shove that insanity under the rug, so first thing in the morning I sent Georgia a detailed e-mail telling her all about it.  In grand friend fashion, she saw me for the creepy stalker I was and told me she thought it was a great idea.  She said I had to contact Diane.  I swore that the last thing I wanted to do was make an ass out of myself in front of a beautiful woman by revealing myself as a creepy stalker, and there was no way I was going to frighten Diane by telling her I wanted her to life coach a person I’d made up in my head…but then  that’s exactly what I did.

To be continued …