I am sure I read Wuthering Heights. Maybe I was in high school. Probably not in college - I was a Math major. No reading lists there. I’m absolutely sure, though, that I got acquainted with—in some younger-me, innocent way—the characters of Cathy and Heathcliff.

Especially Heathcliff.

And while I don’t remember the specifics, I remember the feeling. It’s a chemical reaction, but one our minds eagerly welcome and accept. That whole wandering the moors in a dejected state thing. I’ve felt something like it a couple times, and while it’s rare enough that I don’t usually get too concerned about it, let’s face it: that feeling of strongly wanting to put something on an unending repeat loop can be worrisome. I mean, how many times can you listen to that one Bruce Springsteen song when you’re twenty years old? I’m sure I far surpassed the acceptable number of times I listened to Jungleland.

Why was I so obsessed?

Well, Jungleland is a pretty complex story: a story that takes nearly ten minutes of playing time to tell (which was quite unusual for the song’s era/genre). It’s highly imaginative. Realistic people inhabit it, and it whisks us away somewhere we must want to go to, as often as possible, to relive the tense fear, the hopelessness of those dark, after-the-bars-closed streets of a New Jersey shore town. I’ve wandered those streets, and remember them well. In other words, the feeling that the obsession triggers is persistent. It lies dormant in our memories, and the obsession reignites it. Every encounter feels like the first time.

But why do some stories, like Wuthering Heights, continue to trigger strong feelings, so many years after they were first written? What do some stories contain that lifts them, gives them life, causing us to crave them, over and over again?

Why do they persist?

I think some stories stay with us our whole lives. We feel at once lonely and connected, abandoned and united… when a story hits our hearts and worms its way into our minds. Stories that create obsession connect us to a world we don’t inhabit in the first-person, but they get us as close as possible without swallowing us up. It’s a mild form of insanity, to be sure. And it can turn bad. The thing to know is: we might think obsession controls us, but perhaps obsession is the very thing we totally control in our lives. We make the rules, we set the parameters.

Don’t we?

Wuthering Heights is, itself, a story about obsession. And Heathcliff isn’t real. But those moors—wet, wild, tortured—they are, indeed, real. How many of us will get the chance to go there? And aren’t we all just a little jealous that he gets to wander them so beautifully?

Stories are the physical manifestations of our own limitless imagination. When the waves crash onto the craggy beach, whether we’re mentally visiting the Jersey shore or the Yorkshire moors, we dance without leaving our armchairs, and Heathcliff is no longer alone. He has us.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a local book club recently to discuss Folio, my debut novel about two war photographers who become rivals for the Pulitzer Prize.

And I learned something. Imagine that.

There I was, perched self-importantly on a barstool several inches higher than the twenty-odd ladies sitting on couches and chairs. Copies of Folio were cradled in laps or lay well-thumbed on tables next to glasses of Chardonnay on coasters. I was in Debut Author Heaven. To kick things off, someone asked me the main idea of the novel… that is, what did I think the story’s “takeaway” was, for my readers.

I allowed myself a smug smile, then happily launched into a rant about truthfulness in photography—especially war photography—and how we (that is, society) should be more aware of how that photograph was (perhaps) manipulated to make us feel a certain way (patriotic, angry, sad, hopeful, etc.).

The number of parentheticals required to capture this lofty idea were many!

But, as my editor Judy Gitenstein likes to remind me: If you want to send a message, call Western Union. An old adage, for sure, but it turns out… it’s still true. Because, in response to my lofty, long-winded response, the lady facing me in that book club meeting said (firmly, I might add): “No, it's about a family. And I hate both the mother and the father for abandoning their children.” The room went quiet, and I suddenly had the attention of twenty sets of sympathetic eyes.

The entire book club—in that moment—thought I had no idea what my own book was about; how it had struck a chord with this particular group of readers: mothers, grandmothers… but also daughters, sisters. They saw themselves in that book, and they wanted justice.

Frankly, I was caught up short.

At that point in this very vocal and engaging book club meeting, I wisely changed my stance from speaker to listener. Not that I didn’t keep talking. They wanted to hear about the research and discuss plot details. But the rest of that evening, in the back of my mind, I thought about the lies I’d told myself—much like the main protagonist, Terry Tusley, tells himself—of the (perhaps questionable!) motivations behind our actions, behind our reasoning… behind our stories. The lies we tell others, but, perhaps more importantly, the lies we tell ourselves.

Which is worse?

In Folio, Terry and Francine leave their eldest daughter, Katie, a mere teenager, to essentially raise her two younger brothers while they (Terry and Francine) traipse around the globe, supposedly saving the world. Terry, a war photographer, is embarked on a journey to tell the truth on the battlefield. He is surrounded by propagandists and others whose motives are more related to personal fame than truthfulness. So, he’s imbued with equal parts self-righteousness and ambition. Francine… well, I’ll let you read the book and make up your own minds about Francine. Their daughter Katie tells about half the story in the novel and is the most sympathetic character. It’s “An epic tale of passion, manipulation, and obsession.” (Whitney Otto). That’s marketing-speak for Lots Happens.

Apparently, at least to this book club, Terry and Francine make choices that have substantial negative impact on the very people they should love and protect the most: their three children. But T and F never even blink an eye about their lives. Never apologize, never think twice. They don’t watch, don’t listen, and they certainly don’t change, even when the family suffers a devastating loss. The lies they tell themselves—about personal and parental accountability, in particular—are rock-solid. Impenetrable.

Where the heck did I get these characters from, you may ask? Was I an absent parent? Did I lie to myself about it? How many other lies have I told? Was my childhood as great as it seems when looking back? Did I walk a mile in a driving snowstorm to get to school? Did I block out the angry words, the loneliness? Was I mean, when I recall myself as such a “nice” person? Did I tell myself lies so often that I now see them as truth?

And, even if I did, who among us can cast the first stone?

Folio is, indeed, about rival photographers. But, at my next book club (hey, out there, invite me!), I think I’m more ready for that Big Question regarding what my book is about. It’s about a dysfunctional family that has to deal with neglect (some would say abuse), all in the name of ambition and fame. The family is the center of the novel, not the corollary idea. The parents are possibly villains, not heroes. The book is done, and I would never rewrite it. I’m OK with this assessment of the novel, whether I agree with it or not is irrelevant. Readers will, inevitably, bring a bit of themselves to the page… that’s their job, and, in any case, it’s not something within my control. It’s the risk you take when you become a writer, and one that I’m willing to embrace. But, at least now, I can see it through my readers’ eyes.

Readers. They are, and always were, the smarter half of the Writer/Reader equation. I am beyond grateful, and I hope to write more stories for them to ponder.

Hear, hear.

In the opening scene of my novel Folio, the protagonist Terrance Tusley—elderly, successful war photographer for Life magazine—stands before a classroom of youthful college students, scanning their faces “for a hint of recognition” of his name.

“As usual, there is none. Not yet.”

His disappointment is palpable. After all, fame was (almost) all he ever wanted. But once the Kodak Ektagraphic III slide projector begins to click its way through the eerie slideshow of Tusley’s life work (Dear Reader: you have to wait until the end of the book for this), the recognition does indeed come, in spades.

And herein lies the conflict. Is Tusley all about ambition and fame? Or is he a brave, hardworking photojournalist willing to put his own well-being (and the well-being of others) in danger… all in the pursuit of exposing the truth? Like Tusley, who among us can say for sure just what we’re after when we embark on a journey, especially if that journey’s destination is recognition as an artist… a visionary… the giver of truth and beauty?

And, what if it takes a lifetime to figure that out?

I launched my career as an author in April 2025, “career” being a strong word… more like a side-gig… but a major milestone for me, nonetheless. Family and friends congratulated me; a sense of true accomplishment overcame me when I held the physical book in my hands. When strangers started picking up the book, I was elated.

Ten years had passed since I’d first conceived the storyline, inspired by a heated kitchen table conversation at dinner one long-ago night, related to who-took-a-better-photo that day. From there, I’d leaped to the question of how far some people would go in pursuit of their own strange, self-defined notion of glory… and how that pursuit could have real consequences for those folks surrounding that ambitious, driven person. It was easy to see that I related closely to this passionate, workaholic protagonist, Terry Tusley. In fact, I hated him for a while (which wasn’t great for the story - let the editing begin!). Over time, I learned to be sympathetic to him, and it was interesting to write about all the secondary characters who had to respond and react to him, most especially his children.

One unexpectedly large impact to the book-in-progress was the loud emergence of fake news, which was a phrase that truly didn’t exist in the common lexicon when I began my book. Yes, the manipulation and “staging” of news photographs and photojournalism’s close relationship with propaganda went all the way back to Matthew Brady and the Civil War and continued in force through WWII and Korea. It was nothing new and often considered to even be patriotic from the standpoint of journalists back then. But the idea that journalistic integrity itself could be in doubt… that crossed the line in a new way. I felt compelled to address it, even as the journey of the writing process was well underway. At times, over the past ten years, I had the suffocating feeling that I had to cover The Whole Damn Thing—politics, leadership, modern journalism—and it felt like more than I was equipped to manage.

But the pull to write… the tale itself, with all its abstractions, subplots, character studies and scene-settings… it was just too much to give up. I had the destination in my sights, all along the way. I would—like my ambitious, driven protagonist Terry Tusley—pursue my dream to the end. It would be flawed. But it would be Art.

Wouldn’t it?

Now that The Whole Damn Thing is done, I sit back and wonder if the journey was worth the personal cost, and whether the outcome would enrich anyone’s perspective. The world—that is, my potential audience of readers and reviewers—has been known to change overnight… forget about ten years! It is a reality I must contend with. Like Tusley, I wonder, as I look out at all the fresh (probably AI-generated) faces across the multiverse, whether my story is relevant… whether there is a “hint of recognition” of the book, or of the investment I made to create something out of nothing.

Chapter Sixty
Terry

I touch the advancing button of the projector. Always a few blanks at the front, then the first image snaps into view.
Everything, every goddamn thing, is predictable.
Except for that.
I look up at the image projected on the screen.
“For God’s sake. For Christ’s sake,” I say, like I always do.
Like I have for ten years.

It will take time to find out if the destination was worth the journey. Maybe the journey itself ends, but our experience of it doesn’t ever end. That’s some small comfort, isn’t it?

Tusley himself knew this to be the truth. Good for him.