A Carrot Inspired My First Novel

When writing to another writer, we were discussing where the seeds of our novels came from. I decided to look at each of my novels and share the seeds. 

 

I loved my Riverway condo in Boston. It had been converted from a former apartment building where my aunt and uncle lived in the 40s. 

Neighbors were friendly. One day when I working at home, a revolutionary idea in the1980s. I was able to get more office work done and the laundry. Coming back from the laundry room, the man who lived one floor above, walked by.

Instead of being dressed in his usual PhD student clothes, he was costumed as a carrot.

"Why?" I had to ask.

I give lectures on nutrition to "1st, 2nd and 3rd graders," he said. 

Because so many of my friends worked at Boston universities, (there are 43 of them) I was setting my story in one of them. Even with a professor in an unhappy marriage, the plot was flat. 

At the end of the Harvard Medical School grassy area there was a Middle Eastern food stand. Often I stopped for hummus, baba ghanush, etc. The stand was run by this gorgeous young man who over dosed on personality.

The seed was planted. I thought what if I had the stand owner dress as a chickpea and sometimes a carrot as he sold his food and what if the married professor fell in love with him as she dealt with a scandal at her school. The rest of the book almost wrote itself.

Note: The book was also published in Russia where it got a great review in the Russian Cosmopolitan and made the best seller list for one whole week. Sadly it is now out of print.