Eerie paralell between my book and real life

A Love For All Time was originally published in  January 1993  It was actually the first book I had written, but the second published. But that’s another story. I finished writing it in 1990, two years before my granddaughter was born. Because it was too long I had to remove 80 pages. I accomplished that by removing a subplot involving my heroine’s sister.

 Summer was the first baby born in 1992 in my home town. I waited outside the birthing room along with my husband, the excitement building as to whether she would win the race to being the first baby born in 1992.

We were not alone waiting there in a narrow hallway. Standing right across from us was a friend of my son’. Eva was there holding her 6 month old baby Heather.

I remember talking to the baby who smiled and laughed and I could tell she was a happy baby. I had never met Eva before, but she would soon become a part of my life.

As I said, Summer was born shortly after midnight and became the first baby born that year. Her picture appeared in the newspaper, Summer’s mother holding the baby, my son standing by the bed along with the doctor.

Next day baby Summer came home from the hospital. My son and his wife had been living with us for awhile. In fact, I was the one to give Summer her first name. My son and his wife had wanted to name the baby Celestial Storm, and I countered with, “Why don’t you name her Summer Storm? It sounds like an Indian name, and she does have Indian blood.”

They agreed and so my granddaughter became Summer Storm. But the real reason I wanted her to be named Summer was because that’s the name of my heroine in A LOVE FOR ALL TIME. A book I had been obsessed about writing for a long time. Little did I know how meaningful that choice of names would become.

You see, in my book, not only is my heroine named Summer, but she has a sister named Heather. Here’s where it becomes really eerie. The day after Summer was born, my son’s friend Eva’s baby Heather died of SIDS.

We were all devastated. Here one child came into the world and another left it the very next day. Then, two months after Summer was born, my son and his wife separated and divorced, and eventually my son married Eva, baby Heather’s mother.

It took me quite a long time to see the parallel between Summer in my book, and Summer in real life, but eventually it dawned on me that because my book was too long, I had to remove the subplot of Summer’s sister Heather, and that was like the death of a character.

In real life Eva’s baby Heather would have been my granddaughter Summer’s older sister, a step sister, if she hadn’t died.  My book was written long before Heather and Summer were born, so the parallel between my book’s character’s and the real life ones was not only eerie, but ironic.