Genesis of a Novel

I began writing what would become my first novel in 1999 after writing the poem above.

I have been asked many times over the years, when did I write my first novel and where did the idea come from? Here are some answers. If you've already heard them, my appologies. But this is how it happened.

And so it began, at the end of the first month of the new year, 1999, a year in which I would write over 800 poems

Fresh off of moving from Taos where, the month before back to Dallas, my hometown; it was January 31, 1999—I had recently surpassed the 1200 poem mark.  [finished  2,005th poem  September 30, 1999 1358th poem]

It all started with the poem’s title; “love letters from the sky”. But where did the title come from? Often wish I could recall the exact moment and the exact TV commercial. I have tired. Here’s the best I can do. In a commercial break, probably during a football game, here came the ad that helped change my life.

I had been a poet at the moment for 35 years and had written 1357 poems, that’s and average of 38 per year. That average is skewed, one example, it took my 9 years to write my first 100 poems. “love letters from the sky” would be number 1358.

The commercial. Yes. As I recall, the scene opens on a residential neighborhood. beyond the curb is a beautifully coifed thick green grass lawn. Standing in the middle of her front yard is a woman in black slacks and white long sleeve shirt, I think. To me the image of the woman is amorphous, like the image in first line duMaurier wrote in Rebecca: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again".

Beyond the woman is a house, well kept, white and two stories tall. I can’t recall the color of the sky, whether it was blue or filled with clouds. What I do remember and can’t forget is what happened next.

A literal blizzard turned the sky white. But it was not a blizzard of huge snowy flakes, no, the flakes were white postcards or envelopes, like those paired with a birthday card you’d get at a Five and Dime. Like four by six inch confetti, these ‘cards’ fluttered down on and around this woman. Did she grab one… I don’t know for sure.

But in that moment, the poet in me saw each of those envelopes filled with a letter from her lover… and the phrase hit me: “love letters from the sky”!

I immediately left the living room, TV still proving in my absence that if a tree falls in the forest and there’s a TV camera there not only will millions of people hear it, they’s see it fall.

I went to my ‘office’, fired up my computer and started to write what came to mind, a fully formed story. I began to type the poem above.

What lay before me, that last day of January, were five-hundred-sixteen words from what had just been innocent thoughts of two people meeting in Jamaica and falling in love… unsure if love was even in the cards beyond an island a world away from their individual realities. And what then…

The thought was, it would seem fun, for them to have a no-strings, no-baggage, no conditions, no where-are-you-from’s, no addresses. Like two rogue planets, two people, on the same trip around the sun—waiting to collide.

And collide the did, breaking out into a billion shooting stars that filled their eyes—could love be far behind. They thought so, but this was not their first trip around the sun… they’d both been close enough before to have been burned.

Without baggage to unpack, without expectations to expect, the fell hard. And yet neither felt they deserved to trust their feelings and so set-up a Faustian bargain, a la, an “Affair to Remember’ where the unnamed man plays Carry Grant’s Nickie Ferrante and the unnamed woman plays Deborah Kerr’s Terry McCay who in order to test there love and readiness to commit to one anther said they’d meet at the top of the Empire State Building in six months…

Well these two characters set no far away deadline… he allowed at most a week or two for her fly back to Somewhere, Canada, where she'd tie up this loose ends and fly to Dallas and they’d marry… and live happily after ever.

The more this poet, reminisced about these two characters that manifest themselves and their affair in Jamaica the more he thought about who were these people and what kind of character could this author write about, who would or could answer all the author’s questions.

Out of the misty mind of the author appeared the character he was looking for: Michael Grant, private investigator, former homicde lieutenant, former Army officer, former (maybe) almost independent spook for the amorphous ‘Agency.’

This Mr. Grant would receive a visit from Christopher ‘Chris’ Chisholm, the man in this Jamaican love story who was desperate to find the woman, his intended, Laurie Holden, a name he never knew. (A name with it’s own mythology)

Chris—a man described by Michael’s Gal Friday as a ‘grey man’—came to see him, give him the eight letters and instructed him to go to Jamaica and find out what happened to her, saying, “Finder her, please. And hurry," was spoken but Michael knew the signs, his life was hurtling to it’s end, thanks to mankind’s bane: cancer.

This was the genesis of the author’s first book “Jamaica Moon’* which began to answer all of Chris Chisholm’s and Laurie Holden’s questions.

Because of a ‘silly commercial’ who’s visual caught my attention. I began to emerged as not just poet who tells stories (currently over 4400), but a novelist who tells stories. The difference, one is very much longer with many, many more words.

And yes, Michael’s character spawned other stories, filled other books that now number 37 novels ‘from the Black Book Investigations of Michael Grant and Associates’… containing perhaps something over three million words—all written into the dark.

* I have never started writing a novel without a firm name in mind. My first novel started with the name: The Alternate Contention. It was an apt title because within the story there would be competing beginning contentions on the part of characters, which would expose an alternate contention, ergo the title: The Alternate Contention.

However the ultimate alternate contention was that the title was too Luldumesk… Reminiscent of all Robert Ludlum’s triple-named titles such as: The Sigma Protocol; The Prometheus Deception; The Chancellor Manuscript; and The Gemini Contenders, etc., etcetera. In this instance the title of my first novel became Jamaica Moon, which also has meaning within the story.

Coda

As of September 19, 2026, I have penned 4444 poems, and currently writing on novel #38.