Five Women in Black-Backstory

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I began writing Five Women in Black sometime in 1981 in the faculty lounge of Ovalwood Hall, a classroom/administration building jointly shared by North Central Technical College and Ohio State University in Mansfield, Ohio. At the time I was trying to save a marriage that I should not have been a party to in the first place. (I was a therapist married to a former patient—an absolute no-no in the profession.

I can't remember from where the idea for the story or most of the characters central to it came. Robert Osbourn, one of the protagonists, is a college professor as I also was at the time; the others central to the plot were not based on anyone I knew. And they changed considerably from what I had envisioned as I began the first paragraph. (After I start writing, my characters take possession of their destinies and if I don't listen to them, they tend to go into hiding.)

I had spent several years writing professional stuff and aside from a creative writing class in college, had little experience writing fiction and especially novel-length fiction so I had no idea how to go about doing so. I did create a time/events line but abandoned it shortly after I started Five Women because of conflicts within it.

The first draft and subsequent revisions were written in my cramped, tiny longhand on a yellow legal pad. During the writing I became divorced and after a period of healing started dating my present wife. Early in our courtship she offered to type my manuscript and began the daunting task on a small Royal portable. Sometime thereafter I took pity on her aching fingers and bought her an IBM Selectric. (What a guy!!) About the same time she finished typing the story, I bought my first computer, and we transferred her work to 5 1/4" floppies. I made a few desultory attempts to interest a few publishers then boxed up written, typed, track-feed print outs and floppies and put them in my closet. There they moldered for twenty years until at my wife's urging we opened the box, revised again, and sent it to the publisher of my two previous novels. Since then most readers have given it very positive reviews.