Romancing a Miracle

Silence...

That's what woke Geo. Not the idyllic, ocean whisper that made Sanibel Island the perfect retreat for some downtime with his kid. Oh, hell ,no. This particular hush was tense, thick, the proverbial calm before the storm. The storm in this case being his nine-year old son, Blaise.

Where the hell was he?

Sitting up, Geo pushed a hand throug his hair and shook the cobwebs from his mind. A quick scan of his surroundings revealed no evidence of the boy's whereabouts.

"Blaise!" he shouted.

His words were devoured by the pounding surf. Brilliant move, Sherlock. But since when had calling out for his kid had precipitated a response, much less offer a clue to his whereabouts?

Christ, what kind of father was he?

That's an excerpt from my new work in progress, Passion Storm. Natch, it's a parnormal.

A lot of people feel writing is therapeutic, but I've always argued that for me, story telling is escapism in its purest form. Reality kinda blows right now, so it's no accident that my work leans heavily on magic and supernatural elements. Contemporaries have this way of veering off in a direction that risks coming too close to home. Close to home right now = not so good, especially since my oldest son's difficulties with autism were compounded by schizophrenia.

The culmination of my boy's illness led to the partial burning of our home. Nuf said. Suffice it to say, this last year has been a painful one for my family. We are in recovery mode. So escapism has remained the rule of the day when it comes to writing.

Or so I thought.

When I began my latest piece, all I knew was a few sketchy details. My hero, Geo, is a widower. He is also unknowingly allergic to the toxins in the Red Tide, and he has visited Sanibel Island with his son, Blaise.

When his boy goes missing, Geo goes off in search of him. As his quest to find his son before the season's first hurricane breaks grinds on, the Red tide sickens him to the point that he develops amnesia. He wanders aimlessly through the mangroves until he comes upon a lovely mermaid who has been exiled from her brood for reasons unknown to him. With her is a beautiful young boy....

My mermaid, Arabeth, has her own problems. She is infertile. In this world, mermaids get only three moons in which to breed and hers are over. Unless she wants to serve her brood as a servant to her sister's child, her life is over. Instead of spreading her toxic resentment to her innocent nephew, she exiles herself from her brood.

Solitude brings it's own brand of misery until Arabeth finds a mute child wandering alone in the mangroves. Surely Triton has heard her prayers!

As I began pounding at the keyboard, I discovered that my hero's son wandered off in search of the elusive seashell that would complete his collection. By the time I go to the end of that scene, I realized that the boy in my story has autism.

Woah. Stop typing. Did I really want to go there?

Guess so, because I filed the story away for a couple of days, but it continued to haunt me...

Turns out, Geo brought his son to the islands because the lull of the ocean is the only place in the world where the kid can escape some of his sensory difficulties and simply be a kid for a while.

Or so Geo thought...

Little does my amnesiac hero know that the child he has assumed belongs to the Arabeth is actually his son...until she tells Geo that he is her mate. Since he doesn't remember squat, and he and the boy have matching birthmarks, he accepts her statement as truth. And she's a really hot mermaid. :)

Problem is, Red Tides don't last forever. With the end of this one drawing near, Arabeth knows the man who believes himself her mate,the man she has fallen hopelessly in love with, will soon remember who he is. When he discovers what she has done, he will stop loving her and take away her last, best hope for true love and motherhood.

Looks like this story doesn't intend to leave me alone. Yes, I thought my writing was escapist. And in a way, it still is. In this alien world, I feel safe exploring my greatest fear: that I'll wake up someday and my boy will be missing.

Have there been tears as I've worked on this piece? Um....yeah. But there's also hope growing here. Love makes miracles happen. Love heals. Love transforms....

Love is all about believing in happy endings.

And that's why I write romance.