WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY

Looking back on my life it is easy to see the things that I wished I had done differently. I have made so many bad choices and missteps that I sometimes wonder if I had chosen a different path what my life would have looked like. Would I have been happier, more financially secure or would I have ended up exactly where I am now.

Looking back on my life I can pinpoint a pivotal decision I made that changed the road that I would travel. We all have faced a crossroad where we had to make a choice, and no matter what choice we made we wonder if it was the right one.

Someone that I loved would on occasions express to me how he regretted the bad choices he made in this life. When I spoke to him near the end of his life he still had not forgiven himself for the choices and missteps that lead him down a path that he later regretted.

If I could speak to him now, I would tell him that we all have things in our past that we wished we had done differently. I wish I had told him that he was so much more than the bad choices made.

I would love to hear about what you would have done differently and whether or not you have forgiven yourself for the choices that you have made?

Evelyn C. Fortson

How I came to write a book

I have always loved reading, writing my own book was never a thought, much less a dream... not until I retired at the onset of a global pandemic. March 2020, I found myself retired and stuck in the house with my husband. My retirement party, and travel plans cancelled because of Covid-19. The first few months of the pandemic we like most people thought that this would be over in a couple of months, so we hoarded toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizers, food, and water. Three months later, it was apparent that this was not going to be over soon. Like most of you, I may have overindulged in food and alcohol. I cannot tell you when I started to shower again, brush my teeth and wore something other then oversized t-shirts and leggings, because...in a global pandemic one tends to lose track of time. On the days I could muster up enough energy to get off the couch, I began to quilt. After I made a few baby quilts and face masks, I lost all interest in quilting, and I'm over making face masks.

I belong to the Literary Ladies Joyful Jaunts Book Club; which by the name should let you know that the book was secondary to the joyful jaunts; but because of the pandemic we were not only reading the books but were discussing them at length. I am sure I was lying on the sofa having just finished one of the book club’s selected books, when a thought no bigger than a speck of dust began to take shape in my mind, “I can write a better book than this.”

I remembered the adage, “Write what you know,” so I wrote a woman’s fiction book called, BITTERSWEET. Bittersweet is a story about a woman who looks back on a choice she made over 30 years ago. The decision she made one night to lose her virginity for no other reason than she would be 21 soon. The one-night stand that lasted over 30 years changed a naïve young woman into a woman who tried to be satisfied with the scrapes off another woman’s table. Eloise’s struggle to live a whole life, with a table of her own is the bittersweet love story that not only involves Eloise and Wes; it is a love story that forever changes the lives of their best friends.

In the end, Eloise has her happily ever after, one which allows everyone she loves to be happy.

I cannot wait for you to read this book. I enjoyed writing about the passions of young love, the pain of loss and ultimately finding contentment and a different kind of love as one grows older and wiser in the matters of the heart.

I hope that you too will find the energy to get off the couch and think about what it is that makes you happy or what made you happy all those years ago when you could have been anything that you wanted to be.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Sincerely,

Evelyn C. Fortson