Oscar Friedman's Freakish Occurence - Part 6

In the words of Lewis Carrol, “Curiouser and curiouser”. Just when Oscar thinks things can’t really get much worse, they do. The GPS goes crazy, carrying him far from his destination, finally bringing him where he needs go. Hoping to find someone he can really talk to about it, he invites Jasmine to go to dinner with him.

Jasmine Bond met Oscar in the hotel lobby at six twenty-five and they went to dinner together. They shared a bottle of wine as they waited for their meal to arrive. Oscar was finally able to relax and unwind after his trying day. He had nearly made up his mind to tell Jasmine how the car had been behaving when their appetizers arrived. Instead, he ate his soup, chatting with Jasmine about her day at work and his book signing. The subject of the car’s behavior didn’t come up.

By dessert, Oscar felt as if he’d known Jasmine his entire life. Slightly buzzed, he gazed into her fabulous blue eyes, smiling rather foolishly. Jasmine, equally as inebriated, smiled back at him.

“You know, I think I’ll have to call a cab to go home. I don’t think I can drive in this condition.”

“Me either,” he chuckled. “You know what I want to do?” He raised his eyebrows like Grouch Marx.

Jasmine laughed, shaking her blonde curls.

“I wanna go dancing. You like to dance?”

“I love to dance! Where can we go?”

“The hotel has a lounge with dancing, sir,” the waitress told them in a quiet voice. “They are open until three.”

“Shank of the evening!” Oscar said more loudly than he meant to.

Handing the waitress a generous tip, he walked unsteadily to the lounge with Jasmine. They danced and drank until the lounge closed. Uncertain that she could get home, Jasmine hesitated at the doorway.

“Come upstairs. I’ll make coffee. Then you can call a cab.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “I like coffee.”

Between the two of them, they got his door open. It took nearly five minutes of laughing and shushing to get the card to work. They collapsed together on the king sized bed, laughing giddily.

“You know what, Bond. Jasmine Bond?”

“Nope. What?”

“I’d really like to kiss you,” Oscar said, suddenly feeling less giddy.

“I’d really like that,” she replied, grabbing his coat collar.

Totally out of character, Oscar found himself not only kissing Jasmine Bond, but doing things on a first date he’d never done before. In a turn of events that caught them both by surprise, they were naked and kissing. Somehow, making love seemed like the right thing to do, so they did. Following an even more logical sequence of events, they tried it again just to make sure they had done it right the first time, only to find that they had.

Next Installment of "Oscar Friedman"

The next installment of “Oscar Friedman” is now up at http://secondwindpub.wordpress.com/

When Something You Write Makes You Cry

I just got done writing one of the saddest books I've ever written. Unusual for me, because most of my work is pretty upbeat. It might be intense or action packed, even hot and steamy, but not sad. I don't mean depressing, because the story is one of hope and it has a happy ending. However, I had a lot of moments when I found myself in tears.

Crazy. I'm the one writing it, and it's making me cry. Does that make sense? When we write something that moves us to tears, is that a fair judge of how our readers will be affected? Does it make us even crazier than we thought we were? Or is it something else?

I like to hope that what I'm writing creates an emotional response in my readers. I want my words to excite them, get their imaginations moving and energize their senses. A story is more than just words on a page. They become meaningless and dull if they don't go somewhere. What if that somewhere is dark, murky, frightening? Or conversely, light, humorous, whimsical? Sometimes that place is sadness, remorse, resignation.

The story I wrote hasn't really got a title yet, so let me give a brief synopsis. Kyle, a 34 year old single father, is still grieving after the death of his wife, Margo. She died from cancer five months prior to the beginning of the book. Haunted by his inability to 'fix' the situation and make her well, he buries himself in work and the responsibilities of raising three children alone. Seeing him heading toward an early grave himself, his boss (who is also a good friend) forces him to take a month off to get himself together.

At his boss' insistence, Kyle books a cruise and takes his children and housekeeper/ friend, Carmelita, with him. The first night at dinner, he meets Emily. Beautiful and vivacious despite the fact that she's recently finished chemo therapy, Emily captures his heart. His children love her, Carmelita likes her, everything is perfect - until he discovers that Emily, too, is dying. By the time he finds out, he's already falling in love.

Kyle's past comes back to haunt him and he makes a disastrous mistake, thus jeopardizing his relationship with Emily. Tortured by guilt and self-doubt, he falls into a very dark, emotional place. It is a story of regret, rebirth, renewed faith, resignation and remembrance. It also made me cry like crazy.

Have you ever written something that worked your emotions like the characters? Maybe you needed a huge box of tissues. Perhaps it made you laugh out loud? Did you feel the thrill of that first meeting or the joy of true love's first kiss? Do you think this makes a fair assessment of reader reaction? Is our emotional involvement simply because we are so in tune with our characters?

Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions!

Dellani Oakes is the author of "Indian Summer" published by Second Wind Publishing.