The Story Behind the Story of
Rogue Wave
by Hadley Hoover
To my delight, Leigh Rubin's
January 4, 2005, comic "Rubes" depicted a woman in an overstuffed chair holding
two books. The one nestled against her chest is titled The Story, but
the one she is intently reading is titled The Story Behind the Story. I
hooted, and then clipped the cartoon and taped it to my desk where I'm looking
at it as I write this.
"Where do you get your
ideas?" is a question I am often asked. In the case of Rogue Wave, four
events converged . . .
1) An auction
Even before I wrote my first
book, Kendall & I attended an impressive auction in Rochester MN. As the
auctioneer held up piece-after-piece of exquisite handiwork, and
item-after-cherished-item representing the lives of two well-traveled sisters,
he shared bits and pieces gleaned from the one remaining shirt-tale relative. I
chose to make the sisters twins, changed one sister's crisis to better suit my
story (no, I'm not going to tell you; read the book! If you really want to know
what the original situation was, e-mail me and I'll tell you—but to do so here
could ruin the story for others) and then "moved" the house to San Luis Obispo
because, face it: Minnesota is pretty far from the ocean, and I really needed
the ocean for this story.
Our auction purchases that
day included several things I still enjoy: framed photographs of the sisters in
early childhood, several items from their well-stocked (and unused) Hope Chests,
and the heaviest imaginable floor lamp that lights my reading chair—the latter
becoming mine with the winning bid of $3.
2) Blatant eavesdropping
One day, months later, I was
enjoying a quiet moment with a book on a hotel mezzanine with only two elderly
women nearby. Within minutes of my arrival, a bellhop passed through the area
and, when he spotted the women, struck up a conversation that had obviously
begun in previous encounters during their stay at the hotel since all seemed
quite comfortable joking and chatting together.
Over the next twenty minutes,
I overheard a conversation that spanned the participants' 60-year age-gap and
covered education, careers, love and marriage, and goals. It became clear that
despite their apparent frailties, these women knew a great deal about living a
rich and full life—and, equally obvious, they delighted the young man. In
less than half an hour, the long-ago sisters from the auction gained
personalities (one feisty, one sweet), careers (teachers), and my story revived
again.
3) A child's choice of a
library book
Even with ideas running
rampant, I needed a common thread to make a quilt of the patchwork pieces of my
storyline. One morning, I was next in line behind a child at the library and
happened to notice his choice of books. Topping his stack was one I remembered
well from my days as a librarian, though I had not thought of it for many, many
years. (Of course I'm not going to tell you what the book was—but after you
read Rogue Wave, you'll know!) With that serendipitous encounter, I
found
my thread.
4) A newspaper headline
It would seem everything
should work at this point, but one problem still loomed: I still had no title.
For me, until I have a title, I have no story. I felt like running a classified
ad: Wanted—one title.
Meanwhile, I wrote several
other novels that lived in my head, though I could not forget my nameless
story. Then one day a newspaper headline grabbed my attention—a story about a
devastating sleeper wave. Ahh … close, but not quite right. It sounded, well,
sleepy! Out of the dark recesses of my mind, I recalled a sign on the Mendocino
headlands warning about rogue waves—same thing, without the yawns.
I asked Kendall, "How does
Rogue Wave sound for the rest of Cory Whipple's story?" And so it is . . .
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