So now I want to put these pieces I’ve written, and like very much by the way, in this journal, and fit “it” into the story. But the question is; how do I do that? Well, the answer lay somewhere in the trusty old, “what if” game—I just had to flesh it out—and I did!

Basically, I abandoned the original story concept, and discarded a lot of what I had written based on that concept. I kept parts that I thought would work with a new concept, and began what would fundamentally be a whole new story line.

Instead of the story beginning in the hospital room, I began with my Nurse Rosie character, but years later. Then I brought in a talented young author named, Will Healy, put them in a New York City bookstore venue, and wrote this new opening scene.

The store was a throwback to booksellers of another era. Whether perusing the titles of the multitude of scholarly tomes aligned high upon unreachable shelves or searching in dusty corners for that nearly forgotten gem, one sensed that every imaginable work of fiction and non-fiction had to be in there somewhere. It was a reader’s and writer’s place—a book lover’s place. It hadn’t changed in decades, until the coffee shop was grudgingly added just a couple of years ago to arrest the flight of otherwise loyal customers to the newer mega-stores.
The plump, middle-aged black woman who stood in front of the bookstore—herself an aberration, a throwback of sorts to another era—seemed to have appeared there out of nowhere. Had she been part of the bustling throng of pedestrians moving hurriedly in either direction on the sidewalk, she had been as oblivious to them as they were to her.
Peering through the storefront window, she held a purse in one hand and clutched a canvas shopping bag with the other. Her expressive smile took on an almost maternal glow as she spotted the young author she had helped bring into the world.
At just twenty-six, William Healy was quite young to be such a successful novelist. However, he had been writing since he was very young, and those close to him, the ones who had always called him Will, were not so surprised at his success.
Dressed casually in jeans, battered deck shoes, and a black T-shirt worn under a tweed sport jacket, he looked more like a graduate student at an Ivy League university than a successful author of action thriller novels.
With classically handsome features, light-brown hair with sandy red highlights, and the greenish gray eyes of the Irish, Will had turned out very nicely, the woman mused. He had the rare, innately captivating presence of a young man who appeared to be in complete control of his universe. Outwardly, at least, he seemed to be happy with himself and contented with where he was in his life.
However, the woman peering through the storefront window knew otherwise, and it was her responsibility to rectify the situation. Therefore, as she pushed through the door of the bookstore, her smile began to fade, and her expression became almost somber.
Soon, she thought, if everything went according to her plan, things would change for Will Healy. For she was about to tell him a story that would turn everything he knew about his life and his talent upside down and, she hoped, restore to him what he had once believed in, help him move on, and change his life for the better.

If you haven’t read the book, but intend to, I won’t be ruining anything by telling you that the canvas shopping bag clutched in the old black lady’s hand, contains the journal, and written on its pages are those magical little pieces that I wrote in a flurry, and wondered how to use in the story.