Blending Fiction with Reality

My new Superromance, From Friend to Father, hits the shelves next week, so I thought I would spend a little time talking about what inspired me to write the book :)

For years, I’ve believed that the best fiction is a blend of reality and make-believe and in my FFTF I’ve tried to do just that. When I first decided to write a story about a mother of three children, I was excited and filled with ideas. As many of you know, I am the mother of three young sons, and the craziness that comes with a full house is something I am intimately acquainted with. The trouble Sarah’s (my heroine) sons, Justin and Johnny, get into often stems directly from things my own sons have done through the years.

From flushing my cell phone—as well as various toys—down the toilet to taking the computer apart to literally swinging from the chandelier above my dining room table while I was on the phone with my brand new editor (don’t ask), my boys have tried just about everything there is to try, not to mention a few new things along the way. They’ve broken bones, fallen down stairs, jumped into pools without knowing how to swim, and generally caused enough mischief and mayhem to turn a large streak of my hair prematurely gray. My oldest crashed through my glass coffee table when he was seven (while jumping from my sofa to my loveseat in the family room as I was folding clothes in the laundry room) and my middle son had a penchant for putting everything—and I mean EVERYTHING—in his mouth. From pennies to laundry detergent, this kid swallowed it all—no matter how careful I was, he always found a way to get into something he wasn’t supposed to have. My youngest even spent two weeks in the NICU (Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit) as a newborn, and the prayers Sarah utters as she sits with her baby echo my own prayers as I watched my child struggle for life.

Of course, I wouldn’t trade one moment of the time I’ve had with my boys. Parenting is a journey—one filled with moments of incredible exhilaration and others filled with frightening despair. From cheering as my oldest threw a game winning touchdown to sobbing as my husband did CPR on my youngest, I’ve run the gamut of emotions since becoming a mother. In From Friend to Father, I’ve tried to illustrate these emotions—to show the good times that come with parenting as well as the bad, and I hope I’ve succeeded. I’ve included a quick excerpt, so you can judge whether I succeeded for yourself ;)

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So Sarah did what she always did when she had the choice—threw back her head and laughed herself silly. Then dived for the water shut-off valve at the base of the toilet that was currently overflowing onto the crimson tile floor she had laid herself just over a year before.
Once the water flow was cut off—and the floor mopped up—she turned to Johnny, the oldest of her five-year-old twins. “Does someone want to explain to me what happened this time?”
“Pirate Jack was a bad, bad pirate, Mommy,” Johnny said in his earnest little boy voice, his blue eyes wide with sincerity. “He had to walk the plank.”
“Yeah,” his identical twin, Justin, piped in. “He’s a criminal, Mommy. He deserves a terrible pun-pun-pu—“
“Punishment.” Johnny rolled his eyes with all the angst of a big brother—as if far more than five minutes separated the two of them.
“Walked the plank?” Sarah shook her head in amazement. “Into the toilet? Again? I thought we talked about this.” Over and over and over again, they had talked—until she felt like a broken record. Or worse, a useless one.
“That’s where Jasper went when he died, Mommy. Remember? We gave him a hero’s funeral.”
Of course she remembered. Her brother—her wonderful, irresponsible, fun-loving brother-- had been babysitting the twins when the fish had died and, for whatever reason, had decided to give the goldfish a “proper” funeral. Complete with a burial at sea, accomplished by flushing him down the guest bathroom toilet.
Too bad Tad hadn’t thought to warn the twins that not everything that went into the toilet actually made it down the pipes and out to sea. It might have saved her budget—not to mention what little sanity she had left.

So, how many of you have crazy children stories—things your own kids, or the kids of your friends and siblings—have done?