Story Behind the Story
An Impossible Dream Story
(GLBT Fiction)
It all started with a bicycle trip. In 1995, I was in the middle of a 5,000 mile bicycle journey to raise awareness and funding for AIDS, when I was invited to stay overnight with a family in South Bend, Indiana. The lady of the house was a nurse for the local AIDS Agency, my connection. Her husband, Max, happens to be an English Professor at St. Mary’s College, with special interest in Creative Writing. He saw me keeping a notebook journal, mostly to keep record of statistics, folks I was meeting along the way, and notes of everyone‘s generosity, so that I could later send thanks. Max said I should write a book about the journey, and even mailed me a Writer’s Handbook to get me started.
Once the bike trip concluded, I re-worked the journals into a lengthy, but dry, newsletter of sorts. A couple of small newspapers were interested in follow-up stories, asking questions about my history of biking, and harder questions about family. They got me thinking about this lifelong love affair I had with bicycles, and how that intertwined with the other loves and stories of my life. So, in 1996, I began writing what would have been a memoir or autobiography, but it came to a screeching halt when I developed writer’s block. Some things seemed too real and personal—I wasn’t ready to dig it all up, and lay it all out. It was time to move on with my life, and instead of concentrating on how I got where I was at, it was more important to figure out what I was to do with the rest of my life.
Fast forward to 2008, after the passing of my parents, I felt safe to begin regurgitating the past. It was almost therapeutic, getting it all out on paper, stories I had been deprived time to think about, let alone tell. And I started thinking that perhaps some of my own stories might relate to others, because we all have stories. Certainly, the folks I met on the bike trip had stories begging to be told, but what about the people I learned from, my own heroes in life? Shouldn’t someone know about them? To do it, I had to tell my story, too.
After the first, very rough draft in 2009, I had a few trusted friends critique it honestly. It had potential, but lacked pizazz. It didn’t lack incriminating stories, which could clearly get me into a legal lurch, but it did have more graphic sex than a quality book might portray. So, with round two in 2010, I strengthened the story lines, embellishing them to the point of fiction, and replaced the 
raw with innuendo. They made for some good tales, both serious and fun. By round three in 2011, I had totally fictionalized the characters and episodes. I added stories and characters, and was having the time of my life, being creative. And through it all, I realized that I still had my voice, but through a boy named Vinny Pirelli. I was still able to tell the good, the bad and the funny through all the characters in my own life’s journey on a bicycle—stories that most people can relate to.
Look for a review of this book coming soon here on LLBR!