Presenting Zack or Zac

I am writing this after two seminars this week and another tonight. To say I’m worn out is an understatement. And the seminars are the only thing on my plate. Though dealing with all those people did have a benefit for the book I’m working on, YARN IT!

I mentioned before that the retreat Casey is putting on this time is for a group of her college girlfriends. I know them all pretty well by now, which makes writing a lot easier. But there was something missing. I kept thinking there had to be a guy they all knew and maybe were infatuated with. But who was he and why would he show up at their retreat?

And then he showed up in my imagination. His first name is Zack. I think I have a last name for him, but I can’t remember it offhand. He’s a field reporter for WNN and a unknown someone invited him to the retreat with the promise of a great story. I decided that he got assignments from WNN, but also could pitch them on ideas. He worked on the college radio and TV station and knew from way back he wanted to be in television news. His illusive gypsy-like life makes him even more fascinating. And, of course, he’s charming.

Zack didn’t come completely from my imagination. All those hours of watching CNN reporters getting blown around in the last hurricanes was inspiration, along with interviews I saw with Bill Weir and David Muir. I like to look at the story behind the story. In other words what are their lives like when they’re not on the air.

I thought of a conversation I overheard at the airport. A guy was sitting adjacent to me talking on the phone about getting a gig doing a segment for one of the TV news shows like 20/20. He was on his way to Phoenix and meeting the camera person there. I gathered that he worked as the producer pulling the whole thing together. What I got from his conversation was that the call for the job had come rather suddenly and without a second thought he’d dropped whatever was going on in his life and taken off. If you work in news that has to be your lifestyle. After all it isn’t called olds.

I already had figured out Zack’s past, but what about his future. Then someone who attended one of our seminars this week made me realize that everyone isn’t going to be Anderson Cooper. I recognized the man who came to our seminar a former anchor on one of the local stations here. I googled him and found that his TV news career had fizzled and he’d turned to radio. And now he was a consultant. He didn’t list a wife and came to the seminar alone. Would that be Zack’s future?

For now I am busy coming up with what Zack’s wardrobe is like, if he should spell his name with out the K and how much would it cost him to have a satellite phone. It is always such fun when a character just shows up and wants to be part of the story.