Just One Thing (26 page)

When I was in school, my English teacher Ms. Mac always asked, “So what was the author trying to say?” I maintained that sometimes the author wasn’t trying to “say” anything, but was simply trying to tell a good story. As a writer, sometimes I simply tell a story and then, much to my chagrin, I find I was indeed trying to say something. And then I discover, what I was trying to say wasn’t always what I thought I was trying to say.

For instance, in
Just
One Thing
, when I realized I was saying something, I thought it was
you can recover after something bad happens
. It’s a simple message. I thought I was trying to say that life is like weaving,
it’s up and it’s down. You just need to ride the weft until you come back out on top
.

As I finished Sam and Lexie’s story, I discovered that what I really said was,
a person’s life can’t be defined by one incident
. We are the whole of our experiences. We are the warp, and life is the weft, going up and down around us, transforming us in its wake. Each new line adds to the whole . . . adds to our strength. I think Ms. Mac would have liked the “message.”

But really, as a writer, I started to tell a story about pain, about healing, about love . . . and hey, even about Guinness. Yes, I do love the stuff! I hope you enjoyed Lexie and Sam’s story.

Photo courtesy of the author (2012)

Award-winning author Holly Jacobs has sold over two million books worldwide. The first novel in her
Everything But . . .
series,
Everything But a Groom
, was named one of 2008’s Best Romances by
Booklist
, and her books have been honored with many other accolades.

Holly has a wide range of interests, from her love for writing to gardening and even basket weaving. She has delivered more than sixty author workshops and keynote speeches across the country. She lives in Erie, Pennsylvania, with her family and her dogs. She frequently sets stories in and around her hometown.