Glenn Michaels didn't go to Magnolia at first. His name wasn't even Glenn Michaels.
Tricia Knox started out as a toadie for a scheming woman intent on literally stealing a radio talk show host to work for her... for practically nothing.
The story which ended up as The Legacy of Miss Annie Darden Coggins actually started as a daydream of mine a few years back.
An early draft of the story had a hero named Wayne Jensen escaping his successful syndicated radio talk show as it was about to be absorbed by a woman who intended on blackmailing him to work for her radio station group based in Colorado. Jensen found himself in southern Ohio where he encountered an old flame of his who convinced him to go out on a limb and start his own network so that he could control his own destiny.
Two words... it sucked.
I finished a manuscript about two years ago and shopped it out to a couple of friends of mine including an English teacher and a Librarian. I let it simmer for a while, let my wife read it and came to the counclusion that it sucked.
The second version mirrored the first. I went through several versions of 'meeting the long-lost love', placing the same person in several different situations (a nurse, widowed, retired, with and without grown children, still married but unhappy) and none of them seemed to work. I attached the woman to a talisman... a small pewter pin in the shape of an owl which was given by the hero to his long-lost love some time ago.
Variations to the theme continued for several months until I met Tricia Knox.
Tricia started out as a free-lance writer and publicist for the woman in Colorado - sent to tail Wayne Jensen so that the villainess could keep a tab on him. She eventually finds herself changing sides, disappearing before the "God and Country" ending.
I tried another approach - placing Jensen in Texas without the successful career, working as a drone with Tricia as a co-worker who eventually followed him on his ever murkier pilgrimage up north and for a while, the story was going nowhere.
Several elements of the completed story were already in place when I took a couple of chances.
For one, I took a trip to see my mother in Ohio. While I was there, I came in contact with an old boss of mine, Tyrone Hemry, who was once the manager of WIBO/WPKO in Waverly, Ohio. Part of the discussion had to do with his ownership of a small variety store in Piketon, Ohio. A co-worker at the time I worked with Ty had decided that Ty or Tyrone wasn't a proper name for the owner of a variety store; he would be better off if he called himself "Chuck". We referred to the place as being "Chuck's Bargain Center"; a fact that Tyrone didn't know until I told him while sitting in a diner on a beautiful early January afternoon. I have more to say about "Chuck's Bargain Center" in a later post.
The other chance was taken about a year ago - I took an adult education class on novel writing at the local college. By the time I started, I already had my setting and most of my characters in place. I was still dealing with Wayne Jensen, but Tricia Knox had become more of the co-conspirator. Further, the former 'flame' had disappeared (along with the owl), replaced by Hannah Smith Murphy and the yellow rose.
By the end of the class, the story was 75% complete and in version #6. Last summer, another trip up north to briefly re-acquiant myself with the setting (and snagging the Geocache "Red Streak Crossing" where I left a North Texas geocoin). By the first of November, the story was 98% complete. A weekend as a Team member on N.Texas Cursillo #301 led to the final re-write of the Glenn Michaels character. He had become Glenn Michaels before the second trip to Ohio and he had already attended Cursillo, although he had lapsed - putting it mildly.
Up until a week before I sent the book to Amazon, the title was Finding Glenn Michaels. The back story of Annie Darden Coggins was added - it was a short story written by me between revisions in the past coupl of years - the title was changed, and there we were.
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One other note. In the story, part of the action takes place in what I describe as a hulking old Matador. One, maybe two people other than me would know that the actual car in question belonged to Dane Suter, someone who was on the radio in Chillicothe back in the '70s and into the '90s. Dane was known to many of us as 'The Squirrel', in part because of his high-pitched voice, and in part because he collected things. By the time I left Ohio to live in Texas, Dane owned and had stored every vehicle he had ever owned, including a Vespa Scooter, two Corvairs, a Renault Alliance once used as a postal delivery vehicle, and his mother's 1976 (or was that 1977) AMC Matador sedan in Barcelona trim. I always wondered what happened to that car after he passed. I was happy to have it up and running again for this story.
Be Seeing You!
bdharrell
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