by Ames, Alex
She stood three yards in front of the two kids.
Rick
Ticket printouts in the backpack, everyone’s IDs, drinks, snacks, wet wipes. Money, credit cards, phone, charger. Rick was going through the final checklist. Keys, no car-key needed, taxi waiting outside.
“Last chance for the toilet!” he announced to Dana, who determinedly put her backpack on.
“I am good,” Dana replied. “Wanna see Aga! Wanna fly again.” The little professional traveler.
“We will see Agnes tomorrow, don’t worry. Let’s go.”
He heard shouts and cries outside—hopefully Charles and Britta were not killing each other. Last look, all lights and stove off. Appliances in normal state, no perishables in sight to feed the ants. Rick pushed his own suitcase that contained his and Dana’s stuff toward the front door.
His eyes fell on Britta and Charles wrestling down an older boy. Now that was a bizarre sight, as his kids definitely weren’t the brawling types. No, not wrestling, they were hugging. Not a boy but a woman with short hair. Not any woman with short hair. Charles and Britta fell away from her, and she looked up. It was a first look at someone who looked familiar but couldn’t be placed for a second, reminding him of . . . And the new Louise gave Rick the most beautiful smile he had ever seen in his life.
Dana exploded beside him and with two steps was in Louise’s arms, crying and laughing at the same time. Rick watched, wishing this moment would never end. Then Louise freed herself from the kids’ embraces, straightened and walked over to Rick.
“Going somewhere?” was the first thing after almost a year she said to him.
Rick swallowed, playing along, playing it cool. “Actually, yes. We are flying out to Baltimore tonight.”
“I thought I had left that behind me. What’s going on there lately?” Louise asked.
“Parents’ weekend in Annapolis. Agnes had her induction day on July first.” Rick still had goose bumps thinking about his shorthaired daughter in her white uniform at the Oath of Office ceremony, navy jets streaking the sky above them.
“I’ll join you.”
“You don’t come prepared.”
“I come prepared with a Platinum Amex card. How far do you think that will get me?”
“Ticket availability?”
“Flint, you are a hard sell, like on our first date! One call and I’ll have hired a jet to take us east. Of course, you may decide to still cram into coach instead.”
“You came suddenly.”
“I promised to come back.”
“Yes, you did. I don’t know what to say, Louise.”
“Just say the first thing that pops into your mind, then.”
“Don’t go away ever again,” Rick said.
“I made you a promise. Now I am here. And I want it all. All started about two minutes ago.” Then Louise stepped up to Rick, embraced him and kissed him. She looked different, felt different, but she kissed like the old Louise had done. And then the three kids crowded around them for a group hug. After a few minutes of laughing, kissing, and crying, Britta got out her phone, and they all posed for a selfie.
Agnes
Midshipman Flint came back into her dorm room in Bancroft Hall and opened her locker after the evening exercise. Thankfully no dirt track, only plain old running and an obstacle course. After six weeks her body had adapted to the constant muscle pain and the tight, stressful schedule that dominated every day during the Plebe Summer, the Naval College’s orientation course “to turn civilians into midshipmen.” Half an hour of personal time before lights-out. Her smartphone had been returned to her that evening after six weeks of only letters connecting her to the outside world. It gave an endless sequence of vibrations to indicate the collected incomings of weeks of absence. A message from Britta ended up on top. So great to see the gang again tomorrow! Agnes checked the attached photo, a selfie. She took a second to process what she was seeing, who she was seeing. She read the caption.
Agnes smiled.
All was well.
644ever. CU tom. DLBCD&LOL
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Thank you
Dear Reader,
Thanks for making it this far! Hope you liked the story. If you did, please recommend it to friends and family and maybe leave me a good review on Amazon or GoodReads. Also feel free to check out my other books that are available on Amazon and many other digital bookstores. Although I might warn you that Five for Forever is a slightly different genre than my Troubleshooter suspense thrillers or the Calendar Moonstone Brilliant heist mysteries.
How did this book come about? This is the seventh (or eighth or ninth, depending on how you count) book I wrote. All the books I wrote before were targeted at my kids or resemble books I like to read for myself. However, my wife only read my works in a perfunctory manner as a special editor. Not because she liked them. During our summer holiday in 2014, she read a series of really tacky romances of the modern kind (those Devil Wears Prada rip-offs where a fish-out-of-water country girl gets into a big-city career and falls in love with her boss or whomever and hilarity ensues). I had a pitying look at some of the chapters and declared on the beach, “I can do that!” Actually I said, “I can do better than that!”
The same evening I sat down on my iPad keyboard, opened up a blank Evernote sheet and within fifteen minutes started typing out the storyline of three romantic comedies with the target to write a 100,000-word romance novel next.
Here were the three contenders of that evening, initial titles, spelling errors, and all:
Five for Forever: 40s Father is widower, manages job and raising 4 kids. Has given up hope to get into a serious relationship again. Meets famous actress through his job, becomes entangled with her. Conflict due to usual topics: her deadly schedule, his caretaking responsibilities, different life-plans. Crisis brings them together finally.
Single Forever: Mid-30s career woman, real-estate agent, single mom, meets chaotic artist type with a strange family. Is asked to sell the house/estate of where artist and friends are living. Creative protest of the group, drives career woman up the wall. Hilarious fight ensues between protest and eviction actions, while woman and artist fall in love.
Ocean with Lighthouse: Mid-30s cutthroat career man inherits a beautiful painting from his grandfather, a seascape. It’s part of a triptychon. Condition that comes with this inheritance: bring together the other two paintings of the series in an exhibition in the old lighthouse where the grandfather used to painting. Other owners: strange old man who lives in his own sphere who is a recluse. Young single mother with two kids who is reluctant to let the painting go. They both have to let go of the painting without payment. By convincing the two people, the young man discovers that it is more satisfying to help than it is to win.
When it came to decide in mid-2015 what to write next, I did a short brainstorming session of how much meat I could wrap around the initial bones of each idea. A book project takes a while and you will spend four to six months and long evenings with the story and its characters. So you better like what you are doing and have enough material to last you for 100,000 words in a row. Five for Forever was the quick winner. I immediately could spell out the five acts in the Rick/Louise relationship, and most of the major twists. Also the characters and their traits were readily available, especially the four wisecracking kids and their completely different characters and ages. Runner-up was clearly the Ocean story. Interesting dynamics between the characters’ three generations and between the career guy and the single mom. But in the end it felt too Nicholas Sparksy with underlying melancholy.
The book wrote itself for most of the parts and it ended up at 110,000 words, which were at least 10,000 words too many. In order to make it more concise, I had to remove some very nice characters. To give you insight into what a writer has to part with:
• The research for the Vera history had been originally done by a sassy Hispanic female detective named Lola Steele. A nice scene between Hal, Rick,
and Lola had to go, replaced by the self-led research of Hal and Rick. I probably have to revive that character in the future—she was too good.
• Rick and Vicky had a dinner scene that read well but was not bringing the story forward. So I put the relevant content into the garden good-bye scene. Also the following visit of Rick to his old boatbuilding teacher was gone without replacement. The book is about Rick and Louise, not about shipbuilding or Rick’s past.
• A very funny scene had to go, too: Rick breaking the news of his relationship to his mother, her not getting the fact that it is indeed the real Louise Waters and not some girl with a similar name or looks. (Actually, small insider tidbit: the movie Notting Hill also had a scene cut out that showed Hugh Grant’s character telling his elderly parents about him dating Julia Roberts’s character.)
• Hal is a good friend to Rick and arranges for a string of dates. I only left the Cheryl date in the book as it brought the story forward in the early stage. Some other dates had to go. I was most sad about letting go an interesting second Cheryl date after Rick broke up with Louise. I had Hal organizing a Cheryl rebound that then ends badly when Cheryl feels that she will never be able to compete against the double heartbreak of Bella and Louise.
Maybe I can put up some of the scenes as bonus material on my blog one of these days?
Stylistically, it was clear to me very early on that Five for Forever wasn’t supposed to be a simple romantic story but more along the lines of the great 1990s British comedies Notting Hill or Four Weddings and a Funeral. Of course, I had to steer clear of too much Notting Hill as it is the gold standard of average guy–famous actress relationship stories. Plus, Notting Hill is the probably the movie that I’ve watched the most times in my life, closely followed by Star Wars: Episode IV. Therefore, I consider Five for Forever an homage rather than a clumsy steal, but I leave that judgment up to you, dear readers.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the Amazon Kindle Press team for making “Five for forever” a better book. It is my first time working with a professional publishing organization and you guys made the journey for me a great one. Thanks Kelly, thanks Elise! All remaining errors and any storyline shortcomings are purely mine.
Despite common opinion, writing is not a lonely profession, as you are surrounded by your characters day in, night out throughout the journey of bringing a forty words summary to three hundred-plus pages. I always feel it is not my story but the story as told by the various participants, their viewpoints, their feelings, and their interpretations. But strangely enough, it appears that the characters are unwilling to explain to me in detail how things really work in their universe or their lives. How exactly do you build a wooden boat? What are the various roles on a film set? How do you apply for the US Naval Academy? Maybe it is clear to my imaginary characters but not to me. The topics above were the core research areas for this book. I took certain liberties in all areas, to fit my story line or purpose. Remember, it is called fiction for a reason. Reality is only a frame that can be bent at will. So I beg your pardon in advance. To give you one example: I know that during Plebes Summer the Naval Academy recruits have no access to their cell phones, so Agnes would not have been able to receive the selfie that Britta sent to her. I know they have access to computers and phones during regular study time that starts a few days after parents’ weekend. So I decided to bend the reality to make the ending a little more to my liking. (And in all fairness: I had tried an ending where I had Agnes cut off from phones until the very moment of the start of the parent’s weekend where she would have seen Louise together with her family for the first time on Tecumseh Court. But it was only half as strong as the uplifting selfie/text message, as I wanted to show the independent Agnes in the last scene of the book in a kind of rite-of-passage moment.)
Wooden boats and how to build them are a fascinating topic, even though I am not a sailor. WoodenBoat magazine has been an invaluable source of boatbuilder lingo and descriptions. The wooden boat experience stories Masconomo by Thomas H. Stearns and Wooden Boats: In Pursuit of the Perfect Craft at an American Boatyard by Michael Ruhlman allowed me to deep-dive into an artisan industry that lives from myth, dedication, and hard work.
Various web resources made it easy for me to look into the education and process of applying to the Naval Academy, especially the various pages targeted at the parents of the young midshipmen leaving home to embark on one of the most exciting and honorable careers out there. One endearing, valuable tip did not make it into the novel, but it is still worth sharing: send your sons and daughters a piece of white chalk.
Making movies is surely mythical, but again, it is an industry like any other, with people going about doing their jobs day in, day out. Apart from various Wikipedia pages, I was able to draw some insights from some great blogs of people in the trenches of movie production. Check out Evan Luzi’s theblackandblue.com blog for some great reading, as well as assistantdirector.tumblr.com and theadsblog.wordpress.com for inspiration about little stories that make you appear as an insider.
All the rest was, as usual, blatantly faked—ah, those liberties of a creative writer!