25 Years in the Rearview Mirror: 52 Authors Look Back

Foreword and Chapter 1

Foreword

By Elaine Raco Chase

Writing a foreword to a book that looks back twenty-five years is an interesting challenge. I ran through all those quotations like "if we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it," and "do our past experiences shape our future," and—well, you know them all!

And what did I come up with? Yes and no! Not much help, right? But the authors who have contributed to this delightful book will make you think, make you cheer, make you cry, make you take a harder look at your past to see if it helps with your present and make you re-shape your future.

I love the stories from school days (or should it have been 'daze'), jobs (gosh what haven't I done since I was 14!), romance (for me, just one and going on 44 years), family life (now with very funny grandchildren), hard times (do they ever go away?), writing journey (always something new—paper to ebooks), what my characters were doing (I'm letting them live again as I update) and going further back than twenty-five years.

1985—was my twenty-five years ago. Life was its usual turmoil. We had just moved from Daytona Beach, Florida to Houston, Texas. The kids were adapting, the dog was just staring at the armadillos and I was making new friends and writing. Writers can write anywhere!

My publisher called, all excited, as my book, Special Delivery, a Dell Ecstasy Romance, had hit #1 on all the bestseller lists, and had outsold any other Dell book for that time. "We are sending you to the BEA—Bookseller's Expo—in San Francisco."

I was stunned. And excited. And needed to go shopping! Off I went to the mall, just a mere five miles away. Found some great bargains and headed back home. A mere five miles away.

It was Saturday, twelve noon, slightly overcast. I sat waiting for the light to turn green—unfortunately the guy, drinking the beers in a truck, in back of me—did not stop! Did not even slow down! Just slammed into the back of my small Toyota with his battered truck. Despite the fact I was wearing a seatbelt—he hit me so hard, my body slammed into the steering wheel and kept going through the windshield. That's the last thing I remember.

I woke from the coma twelve hours later, didn't know who I was, but insisted to the doctor that I was part of the TV show Marcus Welby, MD (it hadn't been on in years.) Maybe it was all those tubes, maybe it was all the bandages, maybe it was the sudden realization that all my good underwear, (you know the warning Mom always made "wear your good underwear in case you're in an accident") was missing and in its place a lot of plaster, wrapped ribs, etc. brought me back to reality. Well, the reality that I was in the hospital, not moving and in a lot of pain.

Everything but my nose was broken or bruised or twisted. I had always wanted a more 'refined' nose but alas.... Oh, my jaw was broken—lots of wires there—along with stitches in my tongue. And my vision was not right—glasses of course were missing, but even after an extra pair was popped on my nose by my husband, I still couldn't see—well, actually I could see double everything.

As you probably guessed, I missed BEA and just about everything else for eighteen months. I shed glass for nearly two years from various parts of my body. The vision thing was permanent damage—but the NASA ophthalmologist was able to fix that with special lenses, similar to what the astronauts wear after ocular injuries from space flight trauma.

Flowers poured in and telephone calls. No emails back then. The biggest bouquet was from the phone company—honest. They called, concerned, my phone bill was only $12 that month, not its usual $400-plus—what happened?

My dentist was angry over the stitches in my tongue—did I want a 'fishtail' tongue? NO! So he redid the tongue/jaw—I was at my thinnest from liquid food (of course we all know that didn't last long.)