The Seed for my Novel Chickpea Lover

 

A whole seed packet was needed for me to develop Chickpea Lover: Not a Cookbook.

The first was my neighbor from the condo upstairs. He was often dressed as a carrot. 

Why? I asked.

"I give lectures on eating healthy foods to small children, kindergartners, first graders," he said. "They think a talking carrot is fun."

The second seed was a Middle Eastern food stand. I walked my two Japanese Chins, Albert and Amadeus, on the Harvard Medical School campus. Turning a corner was the stand. What a pleasure to pick up hummus, falalef, baba ghannouj and stuffed grape leaves on the way home.

However, I needed people.

Living in Boston, many of my friends worked for colleges and universities and get togethers often involved the politics and problems, conflict galore for my book. Pick a problem from one school and another from a second.

I needed heroine and decided she should be a loved professor, Liz Adams, who is fired for wrong reasons. Then I added some bad administrators. There were plenty of examples.

I decided to make Liz having an unsatisfactory marriage, but not abusive. She will fall in love with the Middle Eastern Stand owner and get pregnant by him. He dresses as a chickpea not a carrot. 

It was the first book I had published not just in the U.S. but in Russia. When I was in Saint Petersburg, what a thrill to buy a copy. I was told that a review appeared in the Russian Cosmopolitan. The cover designer confused green peas for chickpeas, but I was still thrilled. 

As a writer, so often something off the wall leads to a short story or a book that is only remotely connected. Seeds.

I think of the spring time when I walked by a field of tiny leaves which almost perished when we hit a dry spell. Grow, grow, grow, I'd cheer them on.

Then after enough rain they sprang back and grew and grew and grew ... into tobacco leaves ... not healthy veggies.

Hopefully seeds for novels or stories, do not turn into unhealthy tobacco but veggies that nourish the mind.