Robin Tracy
The Birth of my First Novel: By Robin P. Tracy
It only took twenty years but “Eyes Without a Face” was released by Abbott Press is 2013. They chose not to print the following dedication. Therefore I have released a new Kindle Edition. I also prefer the new cover art.
I completed the first draft in 1993. Yes, I do have a serious problem with procrastination! Day to day life became, as is true with most hobbies, the death (well coma) of my writing career. The manuscript got filed away as we developed a new business and raised three children.
I wrote two other novels over the next few years but to be perfectly honest, they were terrible. I tried to capitalize on topics that were popular in the day instead of focusing on thrillers, my main genre. A romance writer I am NOT! No matter what I wrote my mind always wandered back to my first story. It sounds crazy but even though I created the characters I missed them as if they were real people, my own family. Their experiences felt like actual memories.
My son Joshua was just a little boy when I wrote “Eyes Without a Face” but over the years he often heard it discussed. He asked to read it when he was about nine years old but I feared it would give him nightmares. It gave me the creeps on more than one occasion. So every time he asked I simply said, “You are too young.” As he grew and entered high school, Joshua developed a serious hatred for reading. His teachers were at their wits end.
In 2004, we were discussing the story again and he promised to read it cover to cover if I would agree to finally do the re-write. There was no way I wasn’t nipping at that bait, so I blew off the dust and read the manuscript. Boy was it rough. I was surprised by how much I had learned over the years. Thank goodness the publishers had turned it down!
During my down time in the video store we owned I hammered away at the re-write. About halfway through the process I encouraged Josh to begin working on his end of the bargain. I’m pretty sure I had to threaten to take away his PS2 to get him going on it. By chapter three he was hooked! He began to devour the pages the second they came off of the printer. He spent his entire summer break hovering over my shoulder as I wrote. He gave me lots of fresh ideas and begged me for clues about the ending. The night I finished the final page (at three in the morning) he was right there to rip it out of my hands. The boy who hated to read fell in love with my book; there is no greater encouragement for a writer or a mother.
In 2005 I had a few publisher nibbles but trouble with the video store drew my attention away once more. Back to the filing cabinet it went. I lost my husband of 21 years in 2007 then tragedy like I have never known struck our family in 2009. My son, my best friend and my muse, passed away suddenly. After that I could not bear the thought of changing one word of the book he loved so much and helped me create. Then in 2012 I dreamed of Joshua standing in front of my printer waiting for the new pages. It was time. I re-wrote the book once more, for him. As I did so my fourteen year old daughter Crystal filled her brother’s awesome shoes and hovered as he once did. So for her I will do whatever I can to make it a success.
