Relevance and Relatability

 I hope readers of the novel can relate to [the characters'] struggles and impulsive judgments, even when we react by thinking,  “no, please don’t do that!”  Their lives twist and turn like ours, and realistically not everything ends up tied in ribbons.  But life lessons are real.

I try to challenge myself as a novelist by communicating what I understand the world to be.  I like reading other writers who storytell a different vision than mine, as their narrative is as unique to them as mine is to me.  Everything is about a point of view, realized through  three-dimensional characters embedded, hopefully, in a compelling and memorable plot.  

In Once Upon a Lie, a story of the Eighties, my two principal characters seem as different as the Americas they live in—one in a white and privileged enclave in Los Angeles, the other a Texas town with walls to climb if you’re poor and black and have the ambition and talent to escape.  Their paths cross and a relationship as complex as their differences begins to bloom.   Jaleel and Alexandra (“Alex”) deal with societal problem as well as the personal ones they make for themselves. I hope readers of the novel can relate to their struggles and impulsive judgments, even when we react by thinking,  “no, please don’t do that!”  Their lives twist and turn like ours, and realistically not everything ends up tied in ribbons.  But life lessons are real.  Jaleel and Alex even have their own Facebook pages, their interweaving stories continuing in the present, picking up where the book leaves off. 

Jaleel Robeson's Facebook Profile

Alex Baten's Facebook Profile

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Jaleel and Alex even have their own Facebook pages, their interweaving stories continuing in the present, picking up where the book leaves off. I chose Facebook  as a storytelling platform because while a book does end, a story can and should continue if you like the characters.

I chose Facebook  as a storytelling platform because while a book does end, a story can and should continue if you like the characters.  When I think of Holden Caulfield or Captain Ahab or Harry Potter—and many others fictional beings—they feel like flesh and blood to me. I wish they were alive today to give me their insights into the world.  What would Jane Austen or James Joyce think of our social media?  I can’t help wonder how they would have used it.  
 
I’m looking forward to  watching the CNN series on The Eighties, a dissection of an important decade of politics, culture and technology.  I’m sure I will spot parallels to the society and  the challenges we  face today.   Understanding  history, as many of us learned in school, is the first step in not endlessly repeating our blunders.  

​Michael R French