Sounds like the beginnings to a book, doesn’t it? Well, it kind of is. You see back in the day I put myself through college tending bar at a country club in Westchester County, NY. It was an amazing experience. Yes, there were weeks I worked 7 days straight, there were days I’d work 15 hours straight. There were nights we waited for everyone to leave, opened up the beer taps and sat by the pool until sun-up. I’d go home just long enough to catch a few hours sleep. I’d wake up, feet still aching, grab fresh black pants and a clean white shirt and to do it all over again. It was hard, but the money was great, the staff was fun and the people were, to say the least, an entertaining cast of characters. Oh, the stories I could tell…
Eventually, those days ended. I graduated college. I stayed on a few more years at the club while I wrote young adult books, got married, bought a house, and then the economy did the club in. The bank took possession, the evil Donald Trump purchased the property and he leveled the place where I’d spent so many hours and made so many memories. The huge wooden bar in the window-lined cocktail lounge that overlooked the 17th tee is gone. The pool bar that opened up onto the pool terrace on one side and the coffee shop on the other, gone. The memories, however, are not gone. It is those memories that inspired my story for All Romance eBooks’ 28 Days of Heart series.
No, Shane and Jax are not real people, but yeah, there are little bits of a few of the real-life characters I met over the years within the people who populate my fictional Canton Country Club in Private Lies. And you’ll recognize the setting too. The main bar where Shane and Jax first meet. The pool bar where they sneak away from the crowd. The lounge chair next the pool where they get naughty. Even the ladies room (where they also get naughty) in the coffee shop was real. All those places I can see clearly in my mind’s eye because there were, once, very real.
I will make you a bet right now—I’m still in touch with some people from that club. I bet each and every one of them will see either themselves or someone they know in my characters. Maybe they’re right, most likely they’ll be wrong but they won’t believe me if I tell them. Keep them guessing, I say. That’s the fun of being an author.
Enjoy Private Lies and the knowledge that your reading dollars are going to benefit a worthy cause by helping the American Heart Association raise awareness about heart disease. At the same time you’ll help me keep at least a few of those old memories alive.
Cat
http://www.catjohnson.net/
Author Site
memories, however, remain.
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Buy this or any other 28 Days of Heart eBooks from ARe or OmniLit and all proceeds go to the American Heart Association. You can preorder and a copy will be delivered into your library on release day!
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