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| Boston Marathon Finish Line.1910. Author: Unknown. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
I am a resident of Boston, MA, and have been since just after the blizzard of 1976. The recent, tragic, bombing at the Boston Marathon this past Monday reminds us all of the fragility of life.
It takes some time to process an incident like this, and I am still sorting things out. I'll probably end up writing about it, since that's one of the ways I deal with grief.
Many years ago, a friend lost his wife and all four of his children in a house fire. He had been working on some renovations. Something caught fire during the night, and he alone survived.
I fell into fiction writing around 2005. Before that I'd only written poetry. The first few stories I wrote were for children, in part because I could make them shorter. Length intimidated me, especially as I tend to be terse. In any case, a few months after I started writing fiction, I sat down and wrote a 5000 word story about a boy who loses his mother in a house fire. Several years, many revisions, online classes, a writing partner, and the ICL course in writing for children, I had a publishable manuscript, The Angry Little Boy, which will be published by 4RV later this year.
The book was my way of coping with my friend's loss. While the boy in my book loses his mother, he and his father come through. We all pray the victims of Monday's bombing will do the same.
