THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE started with a slightly scratched and dented eighty year old violin. Our daughter has played the violin for years and we decided to buy her one, instead of continuing to rent. Standing in a dusty, old music shop downtown, with a quirky owner who had been in that same exact place for decades, who possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of all violins for the last three hundred years, I was struck.

Struck with a new story idea that centered on unanswered questions about that violin.

Who had owned that sweet sounding instrument before my daughter? Had they cried over it? Had they lived long and well? Had their dreams come true, or had their dreams remained just that – dreams? Had they lived lives filled with hardship or lives filled with love and laughter or both? Who built the violin? What countries had it been played in? What languages did the owners speak? How had it become scratched and dented? How had it landed in that dusty shop?

Over the next few weeks, while I was, to the point of annoying obsessiveness, thinking about that violin, I also had a stream of images flowing in and out of my overloaded brain. These are the images:

A  lavender farm in Oregon I’d visited.

A bustling beauty parlor on Cape Cod.

The color pink.

Gunshots.

The secrets families hide for generations when they flee other countries.

Running from your past.

Sisterhood.

Love.

A yellow ribbon.

Explosives.

I wanted to throw all those images, along with the scratched violin, into a  story. I started scribbling in my journal and drafting characters, settings, plotlines, etc. but I was suck on my main character, Madeline O’Shea.

Who was she?

That was when my editor, John Scognamiglio, rescued me from my own mental torture and gave me a life coach.

As in, how about if Madeline is a life coach?

Ah ha! The fog cleared. The mess in my head settled out. I was off and running or, more accurately, off and writing.  Madeline became a life coach who didn’t have a clue how to run much of her own life, yet she was advising others on how to run theirs.

I tossed into that literary cauldron a reporter who was going to expose a tragedy in Madeline’s childhood, a mother who wears high pink heels and a shooting in a courtroom.

I folded in a wee bit of blackmail,  a fiery magazine column, a wild appearance on a morning talk show, a sister who likes her explosives, an Irish fisherman father, a tortured grandfather, and a Grandma with dementia who drew a finger down the dents and scratches of the violin and started revealing a long-hidden history.

And, for humor, I sprinkled in a few of Madeline’s clients, one of whom wears a tail, another who hurdles chairs, a lady named Mae who sexually blackmails her husband when she needs things done around the house,  three sisters who dress like cats, and a client named Aurora King who throws fairy dust.

With THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE, as with all my books, my characters lived in my head until the story was done.  This is like co – habiting with a strange, troubled, funny, very noisy family that is out of control, and only exists to you.  It becomes a problem when I get into arguments with my characters and they win the argument.

As for my violin playing daughter? When I see her playing that slightly dented and scratched violin, with all the mysterious history behind the strings,  I still smile. Inspiration for writing can come from anywhere, but when it comes from your child, your dear and well loved daughter, there’s a special sparkle to it.

I hope you enjoy Madeline, and the story of her violin in THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE.