Creating Joleigh-Anna

I wound up creating Joleigh-Anna out of my frustration over the fact most of my relatives get together only at someone’s funeral. How sad! It felt as though many of them were strangers to me more than family.

Because of that, suddenly we want nothing more than to get back all that time, and spend more of it with our deceased loved ones and everyone else we’ve neglected all this while.

Where did the time go?

Slips through our fingers quicker than water. We had good intentions. Even the one laying there in that coffin once had made the same promises to get together more often. To renew old ties… But–for various reasons, circumstances, and situations–it never happened.

So, Joleigh didn’t start out strictly as a romance, although there was a romantic element in it. I used the story–a short story at that at the time–to express the reasons and excuses we lose track of family and friends, going our separate ways until the next funeral.

I could go on and on about this. It affected me that strongly at the time. With very few exceptions, I still only see these people when we’re sobbing at someone’s wake and funeral.

Okay, that’s the serious aspect of the story.

The story’s written with humor about 24 year-old Joleigh-Anna Kelmann who loses a beloved cousin, in what seems to be a reckless dare. A cousin who had influenced her life in many ways and whom she will miss horribly. On what was supposed to have been her wedding day, Matty is buried. Almost none of her relatives were planning to attend that wedding. Because you know–only funerals matter.

In the short version, Irvy and Joleigh don’t break up. They set a new date for which, again, no one seems to want to attend. In the end, she brings them together in her inexorable manner and gets their promise to show up at the wedding.

The title, at the time, was Bring ‘Em Together, Joleigh!

The novel expands on that theme a good deal more, for when Irvy leaves Joleigh standing at Matty’s graveside in the rain, well, now she has to win him back so that there will be a wedding for her family and friends to show up at. She uses the same method to do that, but I had the extreme pleasure of expanding on that scheme!

In the beginning, I didn’t want to complicate Joleigh’s story with subplots. I just wanted to it to mainly be about her family’s relationships with each other and hers with Irvy.

However, I realized that I had paired one of Joleigh’s other male cousins, Lawron Merriweather, with Stormi. Lawron’s also met with an unfortunate end. It occurred to me that I could tie the stories together on the basis of these tragedies, linking Matt’s death with Lawron’s. I tingled with the possibilities! More suspense!

In the novel–once I realized it should be a novel–I saw great potential in the break up of Irvy and Joleigh’s engagement, the ruining of long-awaited wedding plans, and the suspense of whether or not they’d get together again.

Before all that, though, I peddled the short story version around to magazines for a while, but as I was young and lazy back then, it never found a home. Got a few personal messages scrawled somewhere on the rejection slips, so I knew if I just worked at it, it had potential.

But–

I ditched the thing for a while.

A long while . . .

In the early 90s, I enrolled in a home study course through NRI. I did it mainly to get the computer that came with it. Didn’t think I really needed to know much more on how to write a story. I’d been writing stories since I was nine and telling them since I was four. What else did I need to know?

But, hey–what the heck. A computer I might not otherwise get and a diploma I could hang on my walls–those were my incentives to give it a shot. And I had a ball with it. There were new things to learn, but those didn’t come until the third year of the course. The first two years, my instructors were women who recognized the fact they weren’t dealing with a newbie. I clearly knew what made up a story. Camille was easy to please; Roberta, a little fussier, but my marks were still high 90s and 100s; I was happy.

Then, came the third year.

Were my eyes opened!

Gabe did not give either praise or high marks lightly! And, at first, I took everything he said with resentment. After two years of practically nothing but praise, suddenly, I couldn’t write anything that gained this new guy’s favor! Not a thing!

After the third lesson that year, I wanted to complain and get a new instructor. I think I did exactly that. But Gabe talked me around. And, somewhere along the line, I recognized that this guy could help me become even better than I was–or thought I was. If I could please him, even a little, I could learn to please almost any editor.

With a better attitude toward this challenge, I worked harder than I ever had on my craft. When I finally had the opportunity to turn in an assignment of my own choice, instead of coming up with a totally new one, I dug out and reworked Joleigh-Anna; submitted that to him.

I knew he’d rip her to shreds, but I also knew his critique would be honest and fair. If the piece had a chance of being salable, he’d say so, or tell me how to make it better. I just had to be open minded about it, and not take it all too much to heart.

He gave me a 79 for my effort, my lowest grade of all during that 3-year course. As a short story, it fell horribly short. It didn’t suck, so to speak . . . there was just too much material, too many characters, and too much action to develop it properly as a short story. The piece needed to be a novel, he said. “You could have a great deal of fun with this piece. I recommend you give it a shot!”

I recognized his remarks as valid, but I hadn’t intended it to be anything more than a short story, and that was that. I put the story away again.

Until my parents died.

They passed away thirty hours apart (you can read about them at my personal site http://www.strollingmemorylane.com) and my world crashed in a way I never knew it could.

Sure, I was 47 at the time, but I’d been very close to my father, plus I had finally found the rapport with my mother I’d craved since a kid. She’d started to appreciate my talent, reading my stuff and giving me constructive feedback on it. No, she didn’t spare my feelings! Not a bit! And that’s what I needed.

Suddenly, it was all gone.

I went into a deep decline, having numerous anxiety attacks that continue, although lesser in severity, to this day. Was on medication so strong, I couldn’t get up from the couch in emergency situations. Finally, I tossed the stuff and tried to learn to live day to day the best I could with the hurt and unhappiness.

It was natural for me to turn to writing to deal with it all. And of course, Joleigh’s story seemed to be the vehicle to do that with. The short story grew like I never believed it could into a full-length novel. It might have grown to the extent Thomi did, and undoubtedly Stormi will, but I ruthlessly refused to meander the paths that tempted me to deviate.

Now, I’ve revised the story a good bit to compliment both Thomi and Stormi’s stories – especially Stormi’s – and show readers why Irvy acted as he did. One reviewer actually hated Irvy for abandoning Joleigh for seemingly no good reason. He did so because of his deep grief, but as I’ve been working on Stormi, I discovered a much better reason to explain why he did it. And I went back through Joleigh to add that in. It isn’t explained in the same way it will be in Stormi’s story, just enough for you to understand that he really thought he wasn’t doing the right thing at the time.

The ending, while it follows that of the original to some extent, allowed Joleigh to pull off her plan far better than she had been able to in the short story. And for Irvy to explain why he’d walked away from her. Also allowed me to add a little brother to the story which that same reviewer termed wonderful comic relief. That made me very happy as Jarret was one of my favorite characters to write about. He’ll be making appearances in Stormi’s story as will many of those in Joleigh’s.

Including Matt. You get to see the person he was, and see why Irvy blamed himself for Matt’s death, even though he actually had nothing to do with it. He’s briefly featured in Thomi’s story, but in Stormi’s, he plays a much bigger part. Much bigger. And for that reason, his loss will make a bigger impact on everyone. But for Joleigh’s tale, it wasn’t necessary for anyone to have met him first. His death is what influences most what happens there.

All in all, The Resurrection of Joleigh-Anna Kelmann is a far better piece as a novel than it was as a short story!

Thanks, Gabe!