Work-in-Progress Wednesday — Based on a True Story

The project I’m currently working on (beta title:  The Redevelopment of Drea and Kasey) has a lot of bits and pieces of my own experiences woven into it.

In particular, the suburbs.

THE SUBURBS.

I’m sorry, but don’t you think suburbia is a little bit the Twilight Zone?  Amiright?

When my girlfriend told me about one of her experiences as a suburban mom, I told her immediately, “That’s going into a book.”  In fact, you might say that the entire idea for the book I’m working on was hatched on the day that she told me that story as we walked through my suburban neighborhood.

Rather than repeat the story here, I’ll just give you a couple paragraphs from my WIP to show you how I worked it into the novel….

~ EXCERPT ~

Kasey had known Michelle for many years; Logan was the same age as Michelle’s older son.  Back when their children were infants, Michelle ran a local club called “Stroller Moms.”  The new moms and their babies met at the neighborhood park three mornings per week to power walk and chit chat.  It had seemed like a good idea to Kasey when she first went, but it didn’t take her long to realize it wasn’t the group for her.  Michelle, for starters, took the whole endeavor much too seriously; she would urge the moms on, telling them to go faster — “Walk off that baby fat, ladies, c’mon!” — and periodically stopping them and demanding they do planks or bodyweight squats or arm circles before continuing.  That wouldn’t have been so bad by itself, but on the third time Kasey went, the topic of conversation got stuck on plastic surgery — who’d had it, who wanted to have it, who planned on doing what procedure.

When the conversation moved from plastic surgery to which preschools were the most academically competitive and most likely to have graduates who would make it to the Ivies, Kasey realized she wouldn’t ever be coming back to Stroller Moms.  She’d seen Michelle in passing after that — after all, Logan and Michelle’s boy were the same grade and at the same school — but they’d never been more than acquaintances.