Guest Post: Toni Dwiggins, Author of BADWATER

MAKING THINGS UP

My mother died on New Year’s Eve, and therein lies a writer’s tale.

For the past few months of her life, she was re-writing history. For those months, I was
trying to set the record straight.

I should have known better. After all, I’m in the business of making things up, otherwise known as writing fiction. My current work is a mystery/thriller series about a forensic geologist. In Book One of the series, my geologist tracks stolen radioactive waste in Death Valley. In Book Two, she tries to find the killer of her hometown mayor, whose body is found in a glacier, and the town’s safety hinges on the solution—the town sits atop an active volcano. I’m scrupulous in my background research, learning about nuclear materials, learning volcanology. But the stories…I make those up.

So last September, when my mother casually mentioned “that book we wrote together,” I
should have embraced the fiction.

I should have known better. After all, I come from a family of writers. Dad was a newspaperman and wrote books on aviation. Aunt and Uncle wrote western novels and Hollywood noir detective stories. Mom, herself, did a little writing—scripts for a few TV shows, long forgotten. A couple of B-movie scripts, long forgotten. Although “The Indestructible Man” does show up on late night TV now and again.

My mother never did make a real career as a writer in the movie biz. Instead, she became
what’s called a Production Office Coordinator. It was a fine career. Lots of travel, lots of
excitement, location shoots in the south of France, hanging out with the likes of Harrison
Ford and Paul Newman.

Still, she always hankered after that writing career. Mostly, she wanted to write a novel.

She tried. I read her drafts, gave her notes, edited her stuff. What I did not tell her was the truth: her novel just wasn’t very good. I think she suspected as much, but we both preferred the fiction that all the novel needed was one more draft.

When my writing career evolved from textbooks to novels, she was my biggest booster. When my first novel was published, she organized bookstore signings around Los Angeles (her hometown, the place I grew up). Everything I wrote—from magazine work to textbooks to novels—was featured on her bookshelves. She would introduce me as “my daughter the writer.”

But by the time BADWATER came out, her mental state was iffy. Still, she sat with the paperback in her lap day after day. It remained opened to page three. She’d say, I’m just getting into it. I’d say, take your time, that’s the beauty of a book. You can read at your leisure.

And then, last fall, she invented “that book we wrote together.” I said, huh? A month later she talked about helping me research BADWATER. I said, huh? Fast-forward another month, and she was talking about how we solved plot problems. I finally got it right—I said, yeah Mom we did good work. If she’d lived longer, I suspect she would ask why her name wasn’t on the cover.

My mother, when her memory failed, filled in the gaps with fantasy. She made things up.
She was a writer at heart. She passed that passion on to me.

So yeah, in a sense, BADWATER is that book we wrote together.

Visit Toni on her website: http://www.tonidwiggins.com and on facebook.