I’ve just finished writing the third (and final!) installment of my travel memoir series, Memory Road Trip. It’s currently under review by a professional editor, so I’m in a “hurry up and wait” mode until that process is finished.
My brain has been spinning its wheels about what to write about next, and I got the idea to share some excerpts from my two previous books as a kind of review before my new release.
I will start at the beginning with the opening paragraph of my debut book, Memory Road Trip. I remember rewriting the first paragraph at least 20 times because I really struggled with the decision to start a book with a death. (I had the same problem again with my third book, Inner Atlas, where I originally opened with a funeral before ultimately deciding against it.) Writing is a strange hobby, and I’ve only ever written for myself. Yet I know I will not be here forever, so I decided that if I’m going to leave a book (or three!) behind, I want them to say what I want them to say, with no holding back. So, I did it. I started with a death:
I want to start my first story with an apology. I want to apologize to a boy named Paul for inadvertently contributing to his death at the too young age of 19. I know that it was because I convinced my boyfriend to move back to Wisconsin that his best friend wound up dying on a crappy motorcycle on a California freeway. Paul was on his way to the San Jose airport to bid his best friend adieu when the accident occurred. The fact that he never arrived led my boyfriend to conclude that Paul was too hungover to pull himself out of bed, so he boarded the airplane thinking that his best friend was simply being lazy. My boyfriend didn’t know to look out the window and see his own mangled motorcycle resting beside his mutilated best friend somewhere on the road directly below him. The California dream was lying splattered beneath his seat, but he didn’t know enough to wave goodbye to the grisly scene that distance, clouds, and ignorance protected him from seeing.
Here’s a photo of the shitty motorcycle he died on (as modeled by my boyfriend at the time.)
It’s been 30 years since that event occurred, and I still feel sorry for Paul (he’s the one pictured on the right.)
I lament his demise this way a few paragraphs later:
I will sometimes think of all the things that Paul never got the chance to experience. Paul never got to live on his own, he never got to backpack around Europe, he never got to marry, he never got to have a career, he never got to buy a house, he never got to have kids, he never got to fight with a spouse, he never got to get divorced, he never got to face his demons, and he never got to hit rock bottom only to come out a better person in the end. Considering that he died in 1991, he also never got to live under any president that came after George H.W. Bush, he never got to listen to any music that came after Nirvana, he never got to hear about The Oklahoma City Bombing or The Columbine Massacre, he never got to worry about Y2K, he never got to experience the internet, he never got to be addicted to a cell phone, he never got to see the Twin Towers fall, he never got to see the Star Wars prequels, he never got to hear about the Mars rovers, he never got to witness the climate change, and he never got to quarantine for a pandemic. In short, Paul ended up missing the rest of his life entirely, and there will always be a big gaping hole in the world where Paul was supposed to be. Somewhere out there, someone was supposed to have built their entire life around him, but that someone never got to meet their future that never had a chance to happen.
This is the book I wanted to write and did. Very few people have read it because, well, I’m terrible at marketing and I suck at social media. I love the writing part but hate everything else that comes after. It’s not enough to just be a writer anymore, you are expected to do more. You have to be a one-man traveling show:
However, that’s not who I am and will never be. Yet, I will never stop writing, even if no one reads my words. I am the human equivalent of “if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound if no one hears it?” I sometimes ask myself, “if I write a book and no one reads it, does that make me a writer?” I believe the answer is “yes” to both of those questions.
My book Memory Road Trip can be purchased here: (e-book, paperback)
Krista Marson 