The big question i have been getting now that the book has come out is... did it all really happen?
The answer is yes. and no.
Imagination fills a great deal of the book while memories fill in the rest. I wrote the first draft of Dear Isabelle (which, back then was only a paltry 40 pages or so)immediately after returning from my first college semester spent in Seattle. After living my whole life in Bakersfield, I was absolutely enthralled with my first time living in a real "city". And for me that meant a hodge-podge mix of skyscrapers, cafe-lined streets, underground music scenes, indie movie theaters, indie anything and of course swarms of chic people running around in a hurry and dressed always in a rich, lint-free black.
In fact, Dear Isabelle started out as just a simple writing exercise. I remember sitting on my bed back in Bakersfield in front of my laptop (thanks Dad!) and wanting to write down my memories of Seattle so I wouldn't forget them. The first things I wrote about were the sideways rain, the white clouds of steam that rose from the manholes in the streets, and the insanely bright and sunny afternoons that would magically appear after a storm. And then almost suddenly, other things began to pop in my scene as I wrote. Conversations. Music. People I had met. And before I knew it, a little story was quickly developing. I don't know what came over me at that time, but I absolutely could not stop writing. The day turned into night which turned into dawn and before I knew it, three months had gone by. And the only reason I had even stopped at that point was because my mother had gently opened my bedroom door and said, "sweetheart, why don't you get some fresh air? You've been in your room for months and barely eaten a thing. We're starting to worry."
Maybe that's the point that a writer becomes a writer. Not when they start writing, oh no-- but when they start to cause a panicky concern in others.
