Traces Left Behind

Truth be told, I still have a real affection for ‘Agnes’ and it would seem others feel the same way too. The story of this imagined love affair took me back to a time and place long since faded gray and vapid but still poignant to the mental touch.

Dinkytown courtesy of Hennepin County Library

While the affair lasted, it was a fun romp through places and people and bright hopes for the future. With my feet planted firmly in 2022, I could venture back to the mid-sixties and enjoy the experiences that Agnes and I shared together back then. A fair number of my readers seem to have enjoyed coming along for the journey too.

So far I have received two bonus checks from Amazon based on the success of ‘Agnes; Memories of First Love’ on their Vella platform. Writing a novella for this platform was a new experience for me. One never knows if this (not) new approach to story-telling is going to work or not.

While finishing up my story of romance and heartache with ‘Agnes,’ I began to ponder what I might do next if ‘Agnes’ was successful. It would have to be another serialized story that caught my audience’s attention and held it for fifteen or so episodes. As so often happens in the creative process, the core idea for this new storyline remained hidden from my consciousness for a while; three weeks to be exact. Until one day, out of the blue, it revealed itself at LA Fitness between the stationary bicycle and the treadmill.

While I had no idea how the story would end, there was the vapid shadow of a beginning in my grasp. It came in the form of an obituary appearing in the mail out of nowhere.

In this new story, the obituary came from the daughter of a woman I had been involved with many years before. It was more of a note than a formal obituary. The problem is that no one knew about our relationship back then. In addition, there were glaring errors in the notice. It almost seemed as if it had been written by someone who didn’t know the deceased very well at all.

From there, it got even more complicated. When I tried to contact the woman’s daughter I got nothing but dead ends thrown up in my face. Her daughter was evasive in her answers and sounded as if she hardly knew her mother very well at all. Further investigation revealed a pattern of deliberate misinformation and the distortion of facts. The one truth that was revealed was her mother’s love of the city lakes and their picturesque sailboats. So how did the daughter get that part right and little else?

I traveled to Southern Minnesota to make inquiries with an old acquaintance I hadn’t seen in years. He was even more dishonest in his answers. There were hints that the woman was still alive and they were an ‘item’ or at least he wanted them to be.

Then it got even more complicated.

That’s where the story stands thus far. I haven’t figured out an ending but I have managed to add numerous twists and turns in every episode and (I hope) one heck of a plot twist near the ending of the story.

Unfortunately, there are many other pressing projects screaming for my attention. So for now, I can only manage scratching at this outline as limited time allows. I love the idea of exploring ‘whatever happened to’. This past lover of mine and her evasive daughter seem ripe for the picking. It should be one heck of a writing journey when I finally get back to telling their story.