One For the Books

After many months of secrecy, I can finally release the story of my just-printed book. This past Saturday, I attended the launch party for a new publishing company. Its first line, titled One True Romance, is a series of real life romances about engaged couples. It fits into the wedding planning market alongside photography as videography as a permanent marriage memento. Picture you and your other half on a Harlequin for all your friends and family to read.

I wrote the inaugural tome. Yup, I said it. I wrote a book. It is 120 pages of Boston-based reality, outfitted with all the trappings of a traditional romance novel. My name's right on the cover. My words lay prettily throughout. It is the centerpiece for the publishing venture's marketing campaign.

How 'bout them apples?

The best thing about writing a book is that it proves I can, well...write a book. What was once daunting to the degree of paralysis is now attainable. This particular effort was creative non-fiction, but it shows that my lifetime dream of weaving an imagined series of events into the pages of a novel doesn't have to remain subconscious.

As I try to come up with a plot, a bunch of characters, and a setting for the formless novel I've known I wanted to write since I was five years old, I can hold this little book in my hands and leaf through proof that I know how to tell a story. I know how to make a reader care that I'm telling it. I know how to put experience on a page so that it sticks.

As long as I keep writing fiction and don't hide behind the easy truth of these commissioned stories, this whole experience might be my biggest step yet toward becoming the author I've always wanted to be.