Summer, 2020. Lane 10 progressive (the most social interaction we’d had in six months). I’m talking to my friend’s mom, Jan. She tells me about how there used to be a penny candy stand at the end of our lane – and before that, a roller-skating rink. It was THE place to be in the 50’s, and she’d hung out there with her friends (and maybe flirted with a boy or two?) until it burned down.
As she spoke, my brain began to do that thing it does – the thing that makes me a highly anxious person but also a good story teller. What if? What if someone died in that fire? What if she haunts the lane looking for closure? What if a family stayed at the lake all summer during the pandemic and the daughter stumbled onto some sort of clue regarding said ghost and had to solve the mystery?
And so, Pandemic Summer – as it was originally called – began. In the earliest version there’s a lot of covid references – parents working remotely, an older sister in college in NYC who returns with tales of overcrowded hospitals and empty restaurants. But it wasn’t really going in the direction I wanted, so my brain did that other thing it does. It wandered off to something else.
Summer, 2021. My writing friend Dee plans a mini writing retreat at a place on Lake Erie. Everyone else cancels and it’s just the two of us. We sit on patio furniture by the water and I tell her my idea. I’m trying to make it more middle grade than YA, I say, but I just can’t get it moving. Why don’t you try writing it as a verse novel? she says. So I do, and I get a few poems in, but once back at home I abandon the story again.
Summer 2022. I run into my editor Caitie at a BNCWI event. She asks if I have any new ideas to pitch – she’s on the lookout for stories with hope and maybe a bit of paranormal. Paranormal, eh? Like ghosts from the 50’s who haunt lake towns? I decide to return to the book, reframe it back to YA, and write a formal query letter. Caitie loves it. One problem, they’re about to publish another roller-skating story, could I maybe change the premise?
I need to back up for a second. See, I originally thought my main character could find a skate in the lake and it would give her visions, ala Stephen King’s Dead Zone, but the reality of finding an old roller skate just casually washed up on shore seemed pretty unlikely. Then my lovely husband had the idea of her finding a skate key, which could theoretically get stuck under a rock if maybe it was attached to a chain – which people totally did back then. Caitie asked if I could change it to a bike key instead.
That would alter my entire premise.
I said no. The skate key stays.
West 44 releases in seasons, and when the next season approached, I pitched the idea again. The publisher agreed that there was now enough space between the two skating books. I got the green light to write my story.
Summer 2023. Things are coming along, but I’m doing that other other thing my brain likes to do. Procrastinate. My book is due in August and I’ve got a ways to go. Part of my contract requires approval of an outline of the story, but I like to flesh things out before writing the individual poems because when I don’t it is a lot harder to maintain the correct pacing. The novels are required to be 10,000 words and 192 pages long. That takes organization and planning. I was busy doing other things, like getting my boys ready for their trip to Korea. As soon as they left, I would buckle down and write.
They left. And less than a week later I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Dear Caitie, I’m going to need an extension on my deadline.
Last August was a blur. On the weekends we came out to the lake and I buckled down on the book. Hashed out details and wrote the story. Honestly it was a good distraction – it kept me from thinking about the hell that lay ahead.
Turns out, writing this story was a lot of fun, probably the most fun of any of my books. It includes a ton of shout-outs to people and places, which is a fun writing trick I learned from Dee. (If you want to appear in a future book, let me know!) The character of Zeke was inspired by our lake neighbor. As I wrote the book, I pictured his outgoing personality and how he and my boys would devour ice pops during our early years at the lake. The age difference between the characters is big, but with lake friends it doesn’t really matter. After all, my conversation with Jan is what started this whole thing!
I wanted to write a story about loneliness, but also about hope and friendship, about healing old wounds and finding new beginnings. Writing the story helped me during the scariest month of my life, and I hope you enjoy getting lost in its pages.
Sandi Van 