Several years ago, my wife and her mother were watching a series of Christmas movies on TV that I really hated. I would love to decorate my house like they decorate houses in those movies. But the plots and the dialogue were just awful. So predictable. Yuck. I would tease them for watching those movies because it was the same thing over and over: a young woman moves from the city to the country where she finds peace in her grandfather's Christmas tree farm. Her boss, who loves her, follows her to the country to talk her back to the city. He alienates everyone in town, an old boyfriend takes interest in her, the kids sing at the pageant, and suddenly the boss realizes the "true meaning of Christmas" (actually he couldn't be further off) and he and the girl find love on Grandpa's Christmas Tree Farm.
Fresh off my GI Bill English Lit degree, I bragged I could write a better Christmas Story than that with one eye tied behind my back. My wife simply said, "Put up or shut up." So I did.
Rule #1 of being a writer is to Write What You Know. After that, the rest of the rules are silly and generally meaningless, but I remember Rule #1 and I began to write a Christmas story in my favorite place on earth, Southern Erie County, New York. Hills, trees, farms, and life-threatening lake effect blizzards by the dozen. Perfect for a Christmas romance/sex romp. And I finished it and put it aside while I worked on other projects.
Four years later, I dug out what was lamely titled "Our Year" and wondered if I should do anything with it. I cut a chunk out of it and released it in a holiday contest and it took second place! I was shocked. I almost threw that story away! The reaction from my beta readers was that they loved the characters and wanted so much more. Andi, our heroine, is a smart, beautiful, sexy young doctor whose ex-husband did her wrong, very wrong. She meets Paul, a quiet, sullen doctor that she met briefly five years previously. They are brought together in a life-threatening blizzard. Both have serious trust issues that they earned in previous battles of the heart and they come to realize that they will not survive this blizzard if they don't come together. Will they open up to each other? Will Andi's twin 5-year-old daughters find the true meaning of "missile toast?"
I try to make my characters real, individual, and likeable. If there's a character that you don't like in my stories, rest assured, you just identified The Bad Guy. A friend suggested I publish my stories, and I've been writing without direction for a couple of years so I took Our Year and polished it, made the blizzard more life threatening, made the characters kind and warm, and I gave my friend the reborn Andi's Dream - A Blizzard in Buffalo
I truly enjoyed writing that book. It's a fun romp through the 'south towns' of Western New York, the land where I grew up. It's a real insight into what it's like to be trapped in a blizzard in Buffalo, and what we do to survive the blast of snow. That and an insight into what it's like to finally find love and security after a pain filled life.
Agent's Note: You can find Andi's Dream - A Blizzard in Buffalo in its inexpensive entirety, at Bookapy. Here's a link to Duleigh's Page where you can find the above, and all of his work to date. Thank you for your consideration, and have a safe and Happy New Year's celebration!