Last Friday afternoon after the blog posted, I was reading through the comments when one of them jumped out at me and stopped me in my tracks. It was from a lady saying wait just a minute. Wasn’t that teacher of yours at BHS named Anne instead of Eva? The commenter may have gotten Mrs. Medigovich’s last name wrong, but as soon as I saw her message, I knew my SEBR (Sharp-Eyed Blog Reader) was right. In other words, in the midst of my Eva-Yvonne-Ida-Eva tangle in Smoke and Mirrors, my middle-of-the-night brainstorm had gotten her first name dead wrong.
As a writer it’s often difficult to tell the difference between what I think I know and what I don’t. If I’d gone into the office and checked my high school yearbook, the Cuprite, the answer would have been right there in black and white. But that morning, if someone had hooked me up to a polygraph machine and asked me if I had lied about her name being Eva rather than Anne, I would have told them no and passed the test with flying colors!
As soon as I learned I was wrong, however, I knew that in this week’s blog I’d need to set the record straight. So as I was getting my steps that day (Yes. FYI I’m still getting my steps—currently at 44,922,059 steps which add up to 21,340 miles!) I was turning the problem over and over in my head. If the Eva who inspired the character’s name wasn’t Mrs. Medigovich, who the hell was she? The only Eva I could come up with was the woman who was the manager in the Equitable’s agency office in Phoenix during the three years I worked there. I knew her name was Eva. We weren’t especially close, so all these years later, that was all I could remember about her—her first name. I couldn’t for the life of me come up with a last one, and I couldn’t think of anyone from back in those early-eighties who could provide me with any answers.
On that note, having finished my steps for the day as well the copy-editing job on Smoke and Mirrors, I turned my attention to page proofs for The Taken Ones. You’ll be happy to know that this one went a whole lot easier. I was making great progress when, what do you know, there was another Eva. This time she’s a minor character—a bad guy’s mother, and no I didn’t change it. But I did end up wondering, Who the hell is this Eva person who’s walking around in my head?
That was still the case right up until I opened my email on Sunday morning. There I discovered I had yet another SEBR! This one hailed from Louisana, and she told me the blog had sent her down an Internet rabbit hole. In the process she, too, had discovered the Anne/Eva discrepancy in my English teacher’s name. She also learned Eva Medigovich in Bisbee really was married. Her husband, Lee, was born in Yugoslavia in 1897 and fought in World War I. He wasn’t a gambler—he was a dealer, although his obituary didn’t mention what kind. He must have been a good twenty years older than his wife, and when I encountered her as a teacher in the early sixties, it’s likely she was already a widow. Amazingly enough, Equitable Eva, who also last name also happened to be Medigovich, was born in Buckeye, Arizona, and grew up there on a family farm.
So now that the record is straight, we all know that, although I have a good memory, it isn’t infallible. If more instances of this happens in the future, please accept my apologies in advance.
As for The Taken Ones? The page proofs are now in the mail, as it were. Did I learn anything while doing the editing process. For one thing, my penchant for watching True Crime paid off big-time. There are several different kinds of canines working is law enforcement K-9s these days. I had mislabeled one of them—those that search out electronic devices. I had the initials right— ESD, but the wrong words. They’re actually called Electronic Service Dogs. In terms of the plot for The Taken One, having and ESD available came in very handy.
With all that out of the way, it’s time to go back to working on a still-unnamed Joanna Brady #22, but I promise you this—NO MORE EVAS! I think I finally have that one out of my system.