The idea: August

I had the idea for August quite a long time ago. (My first notes are from 2012.) It was originally going to be a road trip, the protagonist meeting a new someone chapter by chapter, with each person who helps him having their life changed in some way. Some of that road trip is still in the book, but it morphed into a love story along the way. The root of that idea was there from the very start, as the protagonist was to escape his retirement home and go off in search of his old love. I simply shrank the road trip part and expanded the story of what happens when he finds her.

I also needed an inciting incident to start my protagonist on his journey. I focused from the start on a health crisis. I was thinking about cancer, but wasn’t sure what kind. So on a trip to Nashville in May 2022 for my younger daughter’s PhD graduation from Vanderbilt, I conferred with my two daughters. The older one is a physician (MD) and the younger one, the PhD, studied immunology and worked on how breast cancer hides out in bones. I asked them what disease I should give my hero. I wanted something that would leave him seemingly all right for his trip. They suggested amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, so I put some study into the disease. It’s relatively unusual for someone in their eighties, but not so much that it would be unrealistic. What a horrible disease. As the motor neurons slowly die, the disease paralyzes you. Death commonly comes with weakness or paralysis of the diaphragm. It was heart-wrenching to learn about, and even more so to write about. I have not yet talked with patients with ALS or the doctors who treat them. I simply haven’t had the heart to do it. But I should. I am in the process of editing August now. It’s time to finish that research.