A Minor Character with a Major Impact

Tuesday night is going to be very interesting. Tuesday night (4/23) I make my first live appearance as Cecelia. You know that’s not my real name, right? I’ll be reading a passage about wine (shocker, I know) from Up the Hill at an event called Drink.Think, at 7 p.m. (bar’s open at 6) at Tavernita (151 W. Erie). You can come see me if you’re in Chicago and you’re curious about what a pretend person might look like.

I’ve written before about my reasons for choosing a pseudonym, so I won’t go into that now, but writing under a pseudonym and signing books as someone else is a whole ‘nother ball of wax, to mix metaphors. It’s been difficult, releasing a book and not being able to tell anyone I know in my real life. I can’t share the happy news of a good review with my colleagues. Marketing is difficult without the frontline of friends and neighbors who’ll buy the first round and spread the word.

But there I’ll be on Tuesday, sitting on a barstool (That's not me in the picture, incidentally. It's Kristen Wiig.) in front of a microphone reading to those in attendance about “the writer” - the un-named character based on a real-life writer and an occasional friend of mine. Before “the writer” I drank a little wine but knew next to nothing about it. Knowing “the writer” initiated me into a world in which I still feel like an outsider pretending to know my way around. He pops in and out of my life at oddly pivotal moments just to set me ever so off-balance. He reminds me that if life is short, romance is shorter. Love is fleeting. Wine is forever.

He’s a minor character - “the writer” - so minor that he never gets a name. However, he’s the catalyst, the spring-board, the raison-d’être for my namesake’s adventure into uncharted territory. That’s why a minor character is important. He takes the protagonist somewhere new; he takes her in a different direction. He causes conflict indirectly. He’s interesting and intriguing, but not around enough to be directly responsible for anything.  He makes her think important thoughts.

Wanna know what I’m thinking? Come see me on Tuesday.