I’m in the shower, falling asleep at night or doing something
banal like mowing the lawn. It’s when your brain has time to
wander that creativity has space to blossom. I try to limit scrolling
on my phone for that reason, but I’m not always successful
in that endeavor. (OK, I’m rarely successful in that!)
CL: What advice can you share with other local
aspiring authors?
CO: To open the manuscript you’re working on every day—
even if you only have five minutes and all you can do is write a
quick sentence or reread the pages you wrote the day before.
It keeps your story top of mind and your brain will be working
on it—figuring out knotty plotlines, playing with snippets of
dialogue—even if your fingers aren’t. That way on the days you
do have more time, you’ll be ready to go.
And my second piece of advice is: Don’t give up. The key to
making it in publishing is perseverance. It’s a very tough industry
with a lot of rejection and a lot of ups and downs, so you
really have to believe in yourself and your work, even when it
feels like no one else does.
CL: What’s your favorite part about writing?
Your least favorite?
CO: My favorite: Writing “The End”
My least favorite: The sticky middle part of a manuscript. No
matter how many books I write, it never gets easier.
CL: Who are you currently reading?
CO: Currently I’m reading “Razorblade Tears” by SA Cosby. Up
next are advanced copies of two of my author friends’ books
(this is one of the great perks of being an author—getting to
read books before they come out!): “Doctors and Friends”
by Kimmery Martin and Atlanta author Kimberly Belle’s latest
domestic suspense “My Darling Husband.”
CL: Why did you start writing? What made you take the
plunge?
CO: I’ve been writing since I could hold a crayon. My mom
has boxes of my first “books” and stories somewhere in the
attic hopefully never to see the light of day. I went to school
for journalism at the University of Georgia and then started my
career in magazines—first at Boating World in Atlanta, and then
Women’s Health & Fitness and Marie Claire in New York, and
then I went full-time freelance and wrote for a lot of different
women’s magazines. But all the while I was working on my
fiction on nights and weekends, and was thrilled when I got my
first book deal for “Before I Go” back in 2013. I haven’t looked
back since!
CL: What/who is your favorite book/author of all time? Why?
CO: I love “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale
Hurston
because every time I read it, I get something different
out of it, which I think is the mark of a true classic. And I’m a
huge fan of Stephen King—his book “On Writing” is basically
like my own personal Bible. I also love Ann Patchett. Every
single one of her novels has at least one passage that makes
me stop, close the book, hold it reverently to my chest and
say, “Wow.”
THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT OF COLLEEN
OAKLEY’S LATEST NOVEL, “THE INVISIBLE
HUSBAND OF FRICK ISLAND.”
While the rest of the town knew the worst had happened, Piper held out
hope. Maybe Tom got disoriented and swam in the wrong direction,
washing up on a deserted island, and was currently eating coconuts and
writing messages in palm fronds for passing airplanes. Or maybe a ship of
Somali pirates picked him up and he was being held against his will,
unable to negotiate his release due to the language barrier. Or a whale
swallowed him whole and he was contemplating his escape from the
depths of its belly. Each of her theories was more outlandish than the next,
but to Piper, none were as ridiculous as what the rest of the town believed
— that Tom was gone. That she would never lay eyes on him again.
In the days following the Coast Guard’s announcement that they were
calling off the search for Tom, Piper found herself growing increasingly
intolerant. And not just with the rescue teams who were, in her view,
prematurely giving up. She couldn’t stand the way people started looking
at her, their eyes filled with pity. She couldn’t abide the way they began
referring to Tom in past tense. But the final straw was when the members
of the Island’s Methodist (and only)
church—where the Parrish family had been
attending for as long as the church had
been on the Island, and where Tom and
Piper had exchanged vows and thin gold
bands—started planning a memorial service
for Tom. Upon receiving that news, Piper
locked herself in her one-bedroom carriage
house, behind the Oleckis’ Bed & Breakfast.
She didn’t answer the phone, or the door,
not even when Lady Judy stopped by with
enough smoked ham and beaten biscuits
and peach cobbler to feed half the island.
She left the food on Piper’s stoop and it sat
there all afternoon until the sun set. Until
Mrs. Olecki retrieved it and set it out in the
main house’s toile-covered living room for
her current boarders to enjoy for supper.
Piper missed the memorial service altogether, where Tom’s mother,
glassy-eyed and catatonic, stood propped up by her brother Frank on one
side and her nephew Steve on the other and the valium that had been
pumping through her veins daily since her husband’s heart attack—the
aptly-named Widow Maker—had made good on its promise. Where Tom’s
cousin Steve’s newborn interrupted the reverend with her insistent squalls,
eyes screwed shut tight, giving voice to the pain the watermen were too
stoic to show. Everyone asked after Piper, murmuring their condolences to
every Parrish in attendance. Poor girl, they said, shaking their heads,
offering various superlatives: too young, most in love, the worst.
But Piper couldn’t hear them. She was in her bedroom, staring at the
dent Tom’s head had left on his pillow when his alarm clock prompted him
to get up at 4:30 a.m. two weeks earlier. Piper didn’t dare touch it—not
even to try and inhale his scent that surely remained on the floral cover. Or
Tom’s near-empty mug of coffee sitting in the sink, a film of mold growing
on the top layer of liquid still left in the cup. Or the book—Middlesex, by
Jeffrey Eugenides—splayed open, pages face down, on top of the two
wooden crates they stacked in the corner to use as a side table in their tiny
den. It was as if all of these things, Tom’s things, suddenly sprouted
magical properties, transformed into talismans beckoning Tom back to
where he belonged—to his bed to sleep, to the kitchen to wash out his
coffee mug and hang it on the hook next to the sink, to the threadbare
easy chair in the den to find out what happens to the characters of his
current novel. They weren’t just reminders of Tom, they were promises. He
was going to come home. Of that one thing, Piper was sure.
And then one morning, just like that, he did.
NOVEMBER 2021 | COBB LIFE 57