People always ask me where my story ideas come from. I lie and say I make everything up out of my head. Only later do I realize what a fibber I am! Its only once someone gets me talking about something from my life and personal history that I realize Ive used it in a book. For example, Skye Evans (in TWO TO TANGO) lives in the top floor apartment of an old house. When I moved to Vancouver in 1995, I was broke, and earning a modest wage working as a receptionist downtown. After a few moves, I got into the perfect apartment. It was a one room bachelor apartment, barely 300 square feet, but the window overlooked a pretty, quiet street, and it was mine. All mine. I lived in that apartment for 4 years, and an acquaintance moved in after me. Years later, I learned that hed gotten friendly with the landlord, and combined the apartment with the small one bedroom also on the top floor, and renovated the heck out of the place, opening it up to the rafters. Now the apartment had a pretty street view and a glimpse of downtown, plus more space! That was the sweet apartment I gave Skye Evans in the story. And I was fully aware of it when I gave it to her. What I didnt realize until yesterday, though, was that I gave her even more from my life. When I moved into that old house, I first lived on the main floor, with a roommate. This was before Craigslist and the internet, so Id answered a newspaper advertisement for a female roommate. The girl I moved in with was a woman in her twenties named Kathy. Thinking about living in Kathys apartment still makes me feel sick in my stomach. An ex-boyfriend had moved out, and rather than move, shed decided to take in a roommate. But she wanted a tenant and income, not an equal partner. What can I say about Kathy? She was pretty and blonde and thought she was pretty special. I was the opposite. The apartment was nice, but I couldnt take the shame. The shame of being a loser and being seen. Id be watching TV already when she got home from work, and id feel the judgement radiating off her as she got ready to go out with her fabulous friends or go see her new boyfriend, Jack. They always went to a restaurant called Fiascos. It was always blah-blah-blah-martinis-Fiascos! They were like the real-life version of the Friends sitcom. I had just moved to the city and knew nobody. Plus I had frozen pizza money, not Fiascos money. My life wasnt so bad, but it looked terrible next to hers. For two months, Kathy kept mentioning her intention to get a bottle of wine for us to share and get to know each other, but she never did. I tried to clean the ceiling in the kitchen, and she simply found my contribution odd. She found me odd. When the bachelor apartment upstairs became available, I gave notice and moved to another unit without hesitation. Alone in my bachelor apartment, I could watch TV, live my loser life, and eat cookies for dinner, without shame. I had switched jobs a few times, taken some night classes, and started a small consulting business by the time I moved out. I emerged a winner, or maybe I always was one. Why do we care so much what other people think? For example, our peers from high school? Id like to run into that old roommate one day and say, Thanks for nothing, and heres twenty-five cents for that time my sister used some of your precious shampoo. In TWO TO TANGO, Skye tries to live with a roommate. Theres a scene where she brings home some beer and makes an effort to get to know the roommate. She feels bad for not having made much effort, and for judging the roommate as being a loser. Why does Skye do this? I was not thinking about my old roommate Kathy and the shared bottle of wine that never happened. Not consciously, anyway. But my experiences are all part of me, and affect everything in the books. Everything. You can see, though, how its difficult to explain how something from my past gets changed and transformed into something in a book. Especially when Im not even aware of it! The characters, however, are entirely fictional. I think. **YOUR turn! Share your most horrible roommate experience in the comments below! Ill randomly select one to win an autographed paperback of TWO TO TANGO** AMAZON / KINDLE: amazon/dp/B00HS9A4AM/?tag=mimifb-20 BARNES&NOBLE / NOOK: barnesandnoble/w/two-to-tango-mimi-strong/1118034895 ITUNES: https://itunes.apple/us/book/id794735470 KOBO: kobobooks/search/search.html?q=1230000208476+ **Share your most horrible roommate experience in the comments below! Ill select one comment randomly to win an autographed paperback of TWO TO TANGO**
Posted on: Sat, 18 Jan 2014 15:00:00 +0000
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