Barry Wilker
I am a retired interior designer. For most of my career, I worked on residential design for homes from coast to coast. I primarily worked on larger homes but always made the time for smaller jobs. In the beginning of each job it was a guessing game. My client and I had to get to know each other. I needed to get a perspective of the new prospect's lifestyle, their attitudes toward life, their personal tastes and interests. After a week or two in conversations we would decide if our ideas and objectives aligned and if they did, we were ready to begin.
Many of the jobs that I worked on took 2 to 3 years to complete. During our time together, my clients would share the same stories of their personal lives repeatedly. I think one could understand how at such times my mind might have begun to wander. It was during those instances, my imagination took free reign. As my eyes followed their lips moving while I was in a totally different world. My brain was in an offbeat mode hatching wisps of ideas that were unrelated to situations. We we'd finished and the client left, I'd jot down those thoughts and ideas. Some things were humorous and some were just plain introspections. When something nagged at my mind for any length of time it went onto paper and into a folder. I am one of those people that you only have to tell me something once and I'll remember it forever.
That is how my novel, "The Lapone Sisters" got started.
About me. I was born in 1953 and grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. My interior design career began in 1976. In 1980 I moved to Los Angeles to continue my career. Bored with the tension of traffic and the hubbub of chaos in Los Angeles, I moved back to Nashville in 1993 where I had many friends and clients. The combination of the two cities created a clientele all over the United States. Around 2015 I began my long and drawn out retirement. I am unsure when I finally cut the cord but Covid helped.
In 2021 during the onset of Covid I pulled my folder of ideas and notes out for my novel and began to sew them together. My ideas morphed into this, my debut novel.
