THROWBACK THURSDAY
BEYOND THE PALE JULY 2023
In July of 2023, I hit 200 subscribers and felt that I was on a roll. It took me five months to get from 100 to 200 Subscribers, which I thought was amazing; it had taken nine months to hit 100. At the time, I’d read an article about how the Belgians had all but abandoned the people of Congo once they’d accepted the idea of Independence. A lot of things in my own life were thrown into the story. I was working on the water at the mill I was at, and there was a “training” vessel that used to go up and down the river. It was called “The Edgewater Fortune.” And being in the habit of using names of people I knew at different times in my life, I used Richard and Vanessa Paton, for no other reason than the fact that I liked her name. Everything else I made up, because that’s what fiction writers do.
It’s an interracial love story, which seemed liked no big deal as far as I was concerned; I’m in one myself, and as we say here: “Love is love.” But I wanted to give my character a name that would be “memorable”, so I used Livingstone, because really, can you think of a better name for a man?
