Multiple Lives

I’ve always wished I could live more than one life at a time: to be able to experience living one life in Manhattan or Durham, NC and another life – at the same time – in say, Paris or Saint Remy; to be a writer and to be an architect . . . or a bartender. Etcetera.

In my novels Michael Nicholas, experiences life –simultaneously - as both a traditional corporate CEO and the head of a major underworld operation. He’s married to his beautiful wife – and has a brief affair with a beautiful professional killer. He has boundaries in one life and virtually none in the other. He lives his second, secret life, in the company of good-natured gangsters, living on the edge.

That’s one of the things that writing a novel (like reading one) allows me to do – experience many different lives, to be inside different characters and, all the while, continuing to live as myself, a writer, residing in the South, married to a terrific woman and, although not living there, at least traveling regularly to Paris and Saint Remy. I live that second life through my writing, with the safety net that fiction provides.

It’s as close as I’m likely going to come to fully experiencing a different life. And, maybe, considering the ill-advised affair Michael had with that bodyguard/professional killer (Sindy Steele), that’s just as well.