Thank you everyone for the comments for "I Am Rosemary's Granddaughter" and the welcoming the site.
I'd like to indulge you a few pieces of trivia about the story.
It was originally written as a screenplay with a country music soundtrack, the opening title sequence used the song "Who I Am" by Jessica Andrews (which has the chorus of "I am Rosemary's Granddaughter..."). The script was never sent off as I didn't know who would want to look at or produce it (it was 2001 at the time) so I let it set until about a year ago (after the publication of "To Be a Different Someone") and started in earnest to try and rewrite it to show how Kris and Michael’s relationship began (the script showed in montage during the opening titles)--because some reviewers of the script said that was the bigger story.
The chapter titles are taken from the albums "Homeward Bound" and "Life" by Aselin Debison. There is still a country sounding streak in the narrative because of where the story takes place.
Kris' name is a variation of Nirvana's bass guitarist Krist Novoselic. Almost all of my stories have a musician's name referenced as a character somewhere.
Kristi was originally a red head but after working with a cover artist and a friend on Facebook I adjusted the character to raven-haired with streaks of red (and, to note, all of my main characters will have auburn tresses) and green in it.
Thanks for the background.......
I am really looking forward to seeing the rest of the story. It's funny, I was born into very old southern gentry - my family settled in the Carolinas during the early 1700's, in the vicinity of Union and Cabarrus counties. I try very hard not to let it show, and most people have no idea where my family is from, or that I spent a lot of my formative years in the Deep South.
I was lucky enough to have been born in Southern California, and to have spent enough of my teen years in upstate NY, so that I can hide the accent very well. Yet if I spend a week or more around the old homestead it starts to creep out (a fact my wife and sons used to think was hilarious), but I refuse to let myself fall into that trap.
It's not that I have anything against the accent or the people from that part of the country - well, except the assholes who keep trying to pass legislation like HB2 - but I have some really bad memories of the area and many of my relatives. Luckily for me, my California birth certificate has been amended to reflect my true gender of female, as has my New York driver's license.
My point here is that Kris' father truly does remind me of my own in many ways - except my father wouldn't have called my mother to talk to me about the skirt. He would have ripped it off of me if I refused to take it off, and would have taken his belt to my ass either way. He believed in Corporal punishment, and he also believed that pain was a great educator.
I believe - no, I know, that he was a sadistic asshole who had a drinking problem. He hated his mother, cheated on my mother constantly, and was basically a functional alcoholic who was convinced he wouldn't live past 55 as that is the age at which his own father put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. A nice little Colt .32 semi-auto that now rests in my home office in a nicely finished wooden box embossed with the family crest, deep inside a padded velvet interior.
My grandfather shot himself 10 days before I was born. I never had the opportunity to meet him, let alone know him, and that pistol is the only thing I have of him.
Of course, the public was told he was cleaning the pistol when it accidentally went off. We can't tarnish the family name by having people know he shot himself rather than live another day with his wife and family. The man was a former US Army officer who knew his way around firearms; he knew better than to "accidentally" shoot himself while cleaning a loaded pistol.
Anyway, I sincerely hope to see more of your wonderful story very soon!
D
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Kris' parents are a bit like
Kris' parents are a bit like mine...mine would be more impersonal. I don't even remember being told that they loved me but apparently keeping a roof over my head and food made it all better and we spent a lot of time in our separate rooms...so I'm kind of using that feeling in this story and a more vicious (yet, also, tragic) form in my other book.