Guest: Wendy Ely, Win a Free Book!

This week my guest is Wendy Ely. Her second book CONFESSIONS has just become available. One lucky commenter will win a downloadable copy of her book! Welcome Wendy.

Alexis suggested I talk about how I came up with the plot for my novel but honestly, I can’t remember where I got the idea for CONFESSIONS. I’ve racked my brain since the date was set for her blog and the closest I’ve come was this: My mom came from a family of 9. My maternal grandmother kept the two boys and got rid of the 7 girls. My mother had been sold at age four. That premise with the other details swirled together and now we have CONFESSIONS.

What I do remember clearly is an incident that happened to me while writing CONFESSIONS. I had been in a relationship with a guy and we were getting ready to take the next step~ move in together. One morning, after staying the night with me, he got up for work as usual. He woke me long enough to kiss me goodbye. The man left. He went to work (he’d been a store manager) put the keys in the safe, went home to pack his things, and left town with no word to anybody. I was in the middle of CONFESSIONS at the time and had already written the big emotional scene between Chelsea and Jordan. When my boyfriend left, I was so upset; I had a million questions whirling through my head. After my two week depression, I took all my anger and rewrote some of the scenes. All of my feelings were fused into those pages. It’s crazy to know I experienced something I had already written about, but his disappearance turned out to be a blessing in more ways than one.

The conclusion to my story is: He ended up emailing me three months later and asked if I’d move to Boston with him. I told him to go to… well, it wasn’t a nice word. What about the conclusion to Jordan and Chelsea’s story? Well, you’ll have to see for yourself but I’ll share the scene I’ve talked about in this blog.

Scene from CONFESSIONS:

His presence seemed to be intruding on the living room. Earlier, he had been so welcome here, now it seemed he’d become a stranger in her sacred space. She wanted him to leave so she could curl up and cry alone until she reached her state of denial.
“What are we going to do now?” She didn’t want to be having this conversation. She wanted him to walk out the door so she wouldn’t have to feel anymore. Feel the loss of her child, feel the love for him, or feel the sadness of what she’d done.
“Damn it all to hell.” His voice boomed through the room.
“Jordan, I’m sorry,” she whispered, tears streaked down her face.
“Stop saying you’re sorry! I’m tired of hearing it. If you hadn’t sold our baby we wouldn’t be here right now. We’d be home. We’d be happy. We would be a family.” His strong voice flung out as if a bomb had gone off.
“Are you ever going to forgive me?” She shrank farther into the chair.
“I have every right to be angry with you, Chelsea. Do you know what I went through when you disappeared?” He took a few steps toward her.
“No,” she said, lowering her voice. “I won’t even pretend I do.”
“I went through hell.” His fist banged into his chest.
“As if I haven’t gone through anything.” The words shot at him like bullets.
“You?” He spat. “What have you gone through? Missing your daughter? You, darling, chose this! I didn’t.” He stomped over to the window and looked outside.
She kept her legs curled up in the chair, as if it would shield her from the hurt she’d caused him. It seemed like they had come so far in mending the issues between them, now they were taking ten steps backward.
“Jordan, please.” She swiped at the tears trickling down her cheeks.
“Please what? Please forgive you? Please accept my daughter is gone? Please forget about my love for you? You might be able to, but not me!” He turned to her, his eyes blazing with fury.
She shot up from the couch. “Forget? You think I can forget you? Look at this.” She undid the zipper on her jeans to reveal the tattoo. “Remember this? I can never forget you with this branding on me! I can’t even look in the damn mirror without remembering!”
“I hope it haunts you like it did me for ten years.” His voice lowered but didn’t lose an ounce of anger. “I didn’t know what happened to you. I didn’t know if someone abducted you, or if I did something wrong to make you leave.”

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To read more of CONFESSIONS or find out more about the author visit www.lyricalpress.com/wendy_ely