Winter, 1917.
Dorothy never really thought that war would take her older brother, but like so many others before him, Ian enlisted and departed Canada in khaki, leaving Dorothy to care for the youngest Gaston, Charlie. The return of her employer's s...
I just wanted to take a few minutes to thank everyone who read SMF this year. This was completely new territory for me as a writer and a little nerve-wracking to do something different, and I'm really pleased that folks liked it enough to read, vote and comment on the story.
I've got a couple of things planned for the first half of 2017 - a short story from Robbie's perspective to get a better peek at his life between the explosion and his arrival in Port Croft, the ebook and print book version (proof is literally in the mail as I type,) and the continuation of Charlie's story.
Now for a surprise ;)
The story went through a lot of changes from back when I first came up with Dorothy about 20 years ago, but the final and most important change was Robbie. He was never in the original - Dorothy was supposed to meet an entirely different man. I'll save the whole evolution for a blog post one day, but the story wasn't working and it would never have been brought back to life if Robbie hadn't leapt into existence one night after I threw on a movie. It was about a sleazy guy who went to Belgium to swindle a sweet old man out of his most cherished possession, only to discover a family history dating back to WWI.
About halfway through the movie, this happened:
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The main character, played by Jamie Dornan, getting a lesson in pigeons in Racing Hearts. That's where Robbie came from, and that's as close as you're ever going to get to knowing what Robbie looks like in my head. A few minor changes to his features and that's basically Robbie on the morning he meets Dorothy outside to apologize.
Also, great movie. You'll ugly cry in the last 10 minutes and be nicer to pigeons afterward.
