Okay, so I decided, or better stated, I was compelled to write Kennison’s Foil, start to finish, but what I had at that point was merely the fetus, and a bunch of scribbled notes. However, among those notes I found some interesting words—some sparks. At various times, don’t know when or where I was at the times, I had scribbled, among other words, “death”, “wretched soul”, “angels”, “hospital room”, “mercy”, “dark and quiet”, and “journal”.

So nearly ten years after having come up with the story concept for Kennison’s Foil, with several pages of my notes propped up in front of me, I extracted words from here and there, and wrote the following paragraph:

In the waning hours of a dank, over-cast November evening—in a dark and lonely hospital ward, a wretched soul lay surrounded by Death’s vigil. While Mercy, with compassionate charity, waits with the spirit of an unborn child, for the faith someone once lost—to be restored again, and help that soul return to the light….

And that paragraph would eventually change everything.

With that paragraph as my guidepost, I began playing the “what if” game again; some characters were dropped, others entered, new venues came into focus, and the story started to move in the general direction that I wanted it to. But then again, there was that eight-hundred pound gorilla, named, THE MIDDLE, still defiantly parked in the middle of my writing space, and once again I had run headlong into him!

What to do now? Well, I thought, get help! I found a writer’s group at my local Barnes and Noble store in Henderson, joined, told them my problem, and our consensus opinion was that I “feared”, for any number of reasons, getting a story written to the end. And perhaps the remedy was to write some very short stories, with very short beginnings, middles, and endings.

So, that was my challenge, and I took it on with great enthusiasm! I wrote a few very short little stories, read them aloud to the writers group, they critiqued here and there, but generally nodded their approval, and said, now, go finish this story that you were meant to write!

And I did, but I kept going back to those very short little stories I had written, thinking about how good they were, almost poetic in nature, and I became fascinated with this new genre. So fascinated in fact, that even while working on Kennison, a word, or phrase would come to me, or I would hear something in a song, or see something in a movie, or TV show that sparked another very short little story. I found myself typing, or scribbling down things all the time and everywhere. And I found them not only a joy to write, but almost mystical in the way these precious little gifts were given to me. And I thought; I have to work these little gifts into my story somehow, and one of those aforementioned words that I had jotted down over the years, “journal”, came to mind, and “Kennison’s Foil”, became “Kennison’s Gifts”.

Side Note:
I mentioned that it was almost mystical in the way these little stories came to me, here is one examples of that strange experience.

A group of employees of my wife’s bank were here in Vegas for a meeting, when one of the young men received the devastating news that one of his new twin babies had died. Of course my wife related this sad story to me that night, and we discussed our sadness for the young man’s loss.

A while later, maybe a day, maybe a week, not sure, but as I was walking from the local library to my car, a voice in my head said, “Where are you Mikey?” That question haunted me throughout the day. Then that same evening, after dinner, and while sitting with my wife out back on our patio, she read a magazine, and I wrote down what that strange question meant to me.

As I wrote, paragraph, after paragraph, I began to tear up, and by the time I had finished, I was openly crying. Quite understandably, my wife was alarmed, held me, and tried to console me. When I regained control of my emotions, I said to my wife, “Remember the young fellow who lost his twin baby?” And then I handed her the piece I had written, and said, “This was given to me just now.” While reading what I had written, my wife cried as well.

I later wrote a scene where one of my main characters, Nurse Rosie, explains to another character, how she lost faith in God, when he took one of her twin babies from her. Then I put the piece I wrote that night, as the very last part of the Epilogue of Kennison’s Gifts.

Even today I cannot read that piece without crying …