Like any good daughter, I called my mother as soon as I got out of the meeting.
I finally had a publication date for Emergency Contacts, and naturally, she was one of the first people I wanted to tell.
With excitement bursting out of me, I squealed: “December 7, 2027!”
Unexpectedly, there was a pause. And then, my mother—the genealogist and family historian—said something that stopped me.
“Do you know what day that is?”
Of course I knew December 7 was Pearl Harbor Day. It’s one of those dates that carries its own legacy in American history. But that wasn’t what she meant.
And then it hit me. Hard. I had completely forgotten what December 7 already meant to my family.
A story that waited 67 years
My great-uncle disappeared during World War II when his plane went down in India.
He left behind a family who didn’t know exactly what had happened to him.
And he left behind a fiancée none of us knew existed.
Eugene was his mother’s baby, and after he disappeared, no one was allowed to bring him up around her. Eventually, that silence became part of the family. By the time my generation came along, Eugene existed mostly in obscure mentions from the people who had known him.
So when his brother, Fred, heard the news that Eugene’s plane had been found and said, “We need to tell Susan,” our natural response was that my Aunt Susan already knew.
She wasn’t the Susan he meant.
That’s how we learned Eugene had been engaged.
Her name was Susan.
And, as it turned out, that’s also how we learned why my aunt was probably named Susan.
When Eugene died, he was engaged. Her name was Susan. And for a long time, she didn’t know whether the man she loved was dead or alive. There was no body to bury. No grave to visit. No definitive answer that allowed the people who loved him to grieve and eventually move forward.
There was just uncertainty.
For 67 years.
Then, on December 7, his plane was found in India.
After more than six decades of not knowing, there was finally an answer.
And eventually, his story found its way to me.
Until They Are Home
I wrote an article that was published in a local newspaper—a reflection of sorts about what I imagined this man to be. Susan read it and asked to see me. His fiancée sat down with me and told me their story.
She told me about the man she’d planned to marry. About their relationship. About what it was like to lose someone without ever really knowing that you’d lost him.
But she didn’t just tell me their story. She gave it to me. She had kept his letters. She’d written out the story of their relationship in her own hand.
And she put all of it inside a teapot.
Not just any teapot.
It was part of the wedding china she’d bought for the life they were supposed to have together.
I don’t know how you hold something like that in your hands and don’t understand the weight of being trusted with someone else’s story.
Somewhere between her words, his letters and that teapot, I knew one thing: I had to write it.
So I did. It became my first screenplay, a drama I called Until They Are Home.
At the time, I had absolutely no idea what I’d set in motion.
I learned screenwriting. Then I wrote another screenplay. And another. I entered competitions. I won awards. One of my scripts was eventually performed live. Another was considered for development by a major studio.
And somewhere along the way, I found my way back to novels. Back to the kind of writing I’d loved long before I knew what a screenplay even looked like.
The teapot came with me. It sits today in a cabinet with my writing trophies, Susan and Eugene’s letters still inside it.
I’ve never really thought about the irony of that until now.
The trophies represent everything that came after.
The teapot is why any of them are there in the first place.
And then came another story
Years later, I started writing about two people named Sofie Anderson and Adam Thomas.
She’s fiercely independent. He’s an ambitious medical student. They become roommates mostly because circumstances leave them little choice.
And somewhere between sharing a home and navigating all the messy parts of life, they become something neither of them planned for.
I called their story Emergency Contacts.
I rewrote it more times than I care to count.
I queried it. I got rejected. I rewrote it again.
And eventually, someone said yes.
Creative James Media wanted to publish it.
Even after I signed the contract, though, there were still pieces I didn’t know. One of the biggest was exactly when this book would stop being a file on my computer and become something readers could hold in their hands.
Well, I got my answer.
December 7, 2027.
And I didn’t even make the connection.
My mother did.
December 7
I keep thinking about how strange that is.
I mean, I didn’t choose this date. CJM didn’t know what it meant to me.
As far as everyone involved was concerned, December 7 was simply a Tuesday on the publishing calendar.
But it’s not just a Tuesday to me anymore. Because the story of a man who didn’t come home from war—and the woman who waited 67 years for an answer—is the story that brought me back to creative writing.
I couldn’t have known that when I sat down to write Until They Are Home. Nor could I have known where that screenplay would lead me or that there would eventually be writing awards sitting in a cabinet beside that teapot.
And I certainly couldn’t have known that years later, I’d write a completely different kind of story, find a publisher willing to put it into the world, and be given December 7 as its publication date.
I didn’t choose the date. Seriously, I didn’t even notice. But somehow, the story inside the teapot in my writing cabinet and the book that will make me a published author now share one.
The first story was called Until They Are Home. Eventually, it was renamed A Long Awaited Day.
I can’t help but smile at that now. Because on December 7, 2027, Emergency Contacts comes home. And I’ll become a published author—a day I’ve been waiting for since I started writing stories at thirteen.
I can’t think of a better one.
EMERGENCY CONTACTS
December 7, 2027
Preorders are expected to open fall 2027.
And now that there’s officially a date on the calendar, I suppose it’s about time I started introducing you to Adam and Sofie.
They’ve been mine for a long time.
I can’t wait for them to be yours.