I began journaling in March 2020, when Michigan went into lock-down and school was initially closed due to the Pandemic. My husband, our three teens and myself were all together as we struggled to make sense out of the many changes. At one point, I encouraged my kids to journal daily. It was all of three days before I had a major revolt, so I kept plodding along on my own. That’s when I realized now was the perfect time to practice self-care and do something for me.
I was going to write a book!
I began writing an intergenerational novel. The three main characters would tell their first-person account of life shortly before the lock-down through March of 2021. The characters would become Jen, a forty-eight-year-old mom, her sixteen-year-old daughter, Kylie, and Jen’s seventy-three-year-old mom, Patti.
I saw how the Pandemic was changing the way that our family and friends were living and relating to one another. And as I thought about these women and began fleshing out their characters, some questions bubbled to the top.
What would happen to the family dynamic if a HUGE secret were revealed – in an inappropriate manner?
How would it impact and change the relationships of these three women? Would they get closer or further apart?
Would the women forgive each other and move on or would they put up barriers?
Every family, no matter how perfect, has an elephant in the room. Would this family continue to walk around the elephant, or would they tackle it head on?
As I worked on the characters, I began to put pieces of my life into the book. Life was challenging and I was feeling stretched with my family, helping three teenagers with the new experience of on-line learning, worrying about how to stay safe from the Covid-19 virus, and figuring out how to help aging parents who were at greater risk of contracting Covid. The more I wrote about these topics, the more it helped me process my own life and what was happening. So, my dream of writing a book, became a coping strategy and was cathartic at the same time.
Creating the characters was a great exercise in self-care as it revved up my creative juices. I took bits and pieces of women I’ve met through the years and created the distinct women, Patti, Jen and Kylie.
Patti the seventy-three-year-old grandmother, is a mixture of six unique women and her character took more than one hundred hours to create the right blend of traits and personality. She’s a vibrant, vain, force of nature that you find yourself loving and getting equally irritated with – much like a beloved family member.
Jen, the forty-eight-year-old mom, is the character most like me and several women I know. She has a warrior mom’s unique way of looking at the world and their experiences, while trying to be super mom and get everything done. She was the most challenging to create, because I felt like I knew and understood her the best – but wanted her to be different, not a clone of me and my friends.
Kylie, the sixteen- year-old daughter is loosely based on my two daughters and a few other young women. I’m VERY familiar with Kylie’s angst over being “stuck” at home and missing out on a year of high school as I vicariously lived this experience through my daughters and their friends.
The Pandemic is the fourth character or catalyst that brings into the open, long-held resentments and secrets the women have been holding onto. UnMasked chronicles the dynamics of three remarkable women with three distinct voices and perspectives.
Creating these characters and writing the story allowed me to exercise my long-dormant dream to become an author. My hope is that you will enjoy reading UnMasked as much as I enjoyed writing it. I’m excited to share it with you!
Stay tuned – pre-orders will be available soon. UnMasked is coming out mid 2023!