Book Five
I have often utilized experiences from my life--something I have done or seen or even wanted to have happen--in all of the books, to one degree or another. In SLIGHT OF MIND, it was almost all what I experienced when I began dating Michael. Eliminate the pagans, the dieties, and Paul and you pretty much have my life as I lived it that summer and fall, as well as the trip to Europe with Dino, Joey, and Michael.
While a writer may often try to make things work out in art when they do not work out in real life, here I simply merged the series's characters, added a crisis for them all in which Greg forgets Paul and his superior abilities and takes up with Michael, and you have art imitating my life at the time. I did not try to make Michael any worse than he behaved in real life--he made himself bad enough all on his own. Our dear friend Frank did die, and I did compose and read his eulogy at his funeral, the same one found within the book.
I have not been back to London or Paris since that heartbreaking trip in 1995. I hope to see London again someday, and Paris, certainly, before I die. I just hope that the next time I go, I am with a boyfriend/partner who appreciates me and with whom I am in love while he loves me as equally as life allows that sort of thing. That would be sooo much better, don't you think?
It might not make for as crazily exciting a book as this one, but the experience would surely be more personally satisfying nonetheless. Seeing the City of Light, the City of Love, might have been more tragic and intriguing when you are seeing it with someone who is betraying your feelings behind your back, all the while pretending that he actually cares for you. But I still believe in happy endings, ultimately. I just keep waiting for my own happy ending regarding love and devotion. At 60, I hope to find it as much as I ever did. In 1995, while in my mid-40's, I certainly did not. But I got a book that was important for me to write, and a significant addition to the series, regardless of what I had hoped for in my personal life.
While I haven't the talent or stature of those tragic figures in art or literature who wrote of their own disappointments and grief while creating something of lasting value, SLIGHT OF MIND was my own contribution. Perhaps someone else can take the lessons therein and learn from them. I certainly have.
The enhanced photo on the cover is from one I took at the Louvre at the time. Anita Kocourek did another fine job of taking reality and making it look stunning with a little graphic magic. And while the title echoes the phrase "sleight of hand," and was meant to do so, I did mean it to be SLIGHT OF MIND: "an act of pointed disrespect or discourtesy".
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