Il Pleure Dans Mon Coeur by Greg McLaughlin at Inkitt

Foreward

I’d always enjoyed staying up late at night, writing mythical fantasy stories in the style of my favorite authors, JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. I’d inherited my mother’s creative and artistic talents and enjoyed great encouragement by her. But my father, and namesake - Greg McLaughlin Sr. - was always my biggest fan and supporter in everything I did throughout my life.

I believe it was an attempt to motivate me and show me the art of the possible. I’d also like to think he did it out of some sense of pride in his own accomplishment. But, nearly forty years ago, after a casual discussion about my own writing interests, my father pulled me aside to show me something. It seemed like he was letting me in on a big secret. He pulled out the drawer beneath his massive L-shaped desk to reveal an olive-green manila folder with a pile of faded, yellow pages neatly fastened by a brass clip.

He told me few details. I remember the main character of his manuscript was named Michael Mahoney. He described him as a clever but lost soul, a Holden Caulfield type, transplanted from the United States to Paris, France where he trolled the streets, picking pockets, getting drunk and chasing women.

I was about fourteen at the time. I didn’t have the emotional maturity to write about such real-world characters. I was still fixated on elves, dwarves, hobbits and dragons. But, the stack of neatly fastened pages fascinated me. Soon after showing it to me for a few brief seconds, he stashed away his work, and I didn’t see it again for a very long time.

My dad could always tell a thrilling story. He could surely embellish the details and captivate an audience. He coached me, my brother and sister in sports and often delivered rousing pre-game speeches or heartfelt words at the end of each season. He navigated his career in sales, consulting and sales training as, essentially, a professional story-teller. His success stemmed from his ability to get people to buy into his hopes, dreams, ideas and suggestions. He had a great talent for it. I’ve spent the better part of my adulthood emulating that skillset and seeking the type of influence he wielded through his ability to relate to others.

It took me nearly thirty years to aspire to become a commercially successful writer, even longer to accomplish the goal. And I still have a long way to go. My first novel, THE CURVE IN THE ROAD, took me eight years to write. I was newly married, scratching and clawing my way through my career as a Sales Operations and Sales Training professional and a new father. I had little time to devote to this passionate interest of mine. I imagine my father must have felt the same at some point, or maybe at many points in his life.

I started my ambitious second novel, THE SECOND COMING, my father’s favorite. It took me five years to finish that one. During that time, I also started and finished THE TRIPLE DATE, a three-generation romantic comedy, which was my best seller for many years. By the time I finished THE THIRD PARTY, a political thriller, my father read all my books and loved them. He’d call me whenever he finished reading one, and we’d discuss it at length for an hour or longer. He’d want to know how I invented the characters, why I chose the setting, how I conducted my research. He’d tell me which parts he thought were clever or surprising. He had little criticism and a wealth of praise. I looked forward to those calls every time I published a new novel.

I reeled off a couple more social-political thrillers including BROKEN ENGLISH, about immigration, UNDER THE AURORA, about homelessness and THE B TEAM, a light romantic comedy, touching on the sometimes-toxic world of small-town youth sports.

My father read each one and beamed praise in our own little personal book club calls. It was also around this time that he encouraged me to write a story about the tiny, tight-knit beach community where we grew up, Matunuck, Rhode Island. We had a winter home in Connecticut, but summered on the Rhode Island shore, where my grandparents, great aunts and uncles and countless cousins all lived within a five-square-mile radius.

I tried to write a story about Matunuck. But we had such an idyllic childhood, I couldn’t invent enough conflict to drive a plot. I had a wonderful setting and an endless supply of characters, all based on my family members. But there was no drama to serve as the compelling narrative to the story. For years, my dad prodded me to capture the magic of that time. I kept telling him I couldn’t come up with anything.

And then, one day, October 16th, 2020, to be exact, during the height of COVID, my sister held an outdoor birthday party to celebrate my father’s eightieth birthday. We sat in a socially-distanced circle telling stories, laughing, eating great food and watching old home movies on a television monitor my sister set up in her driveway.

The movies brought me right back to those summer afternoons and evening family parties. I saw my grandparents dancing at their fiftieth wedding anniversary party. I saw great aunts and uncles who have since passed away. I saw cousins that have moved out of town and faded from the family.

And, I saw my beautiful mother, who died too young at fifty years old. I heard her voice for the first time in a long time.

That night, and for the rest of that weekend, I chained myself to my desk. I had the story locked in my mind. I wrote 40,000 words in one weekend, which amounted to roughly half of a commercial-length novel. The words flowed out of my fingers. The conflict was Time; how time marches on and takes the cherished memories of the past with it; and how we can’t beat time, but how it’s worth the effort to cling to those wonderful moments of the past with all your heart and might.

I published MATUNUCK a month later. The story had it all; raw, honest emotion, drama, tension, light-hearted comedy, touching family moments, nostalgia for a beloved place that represents home for so many people, happy memories of a time gone by and even a dash of romance. The novel became my best-seller by a wide margin and generated a sequel, EROSION, which is my second-best seller.

Soon after publishing MATUNUCK, my father called me. He was in tears. He had just finished reading the novel and had to speak with me immediately. We had the most amazing conversation about it. He told me how it helped him remember and relive the most magical times of his life. He thanked me for honoring my mother, my grandparents and all the wonderful family members who have since departed. I’m so glad and eternally grateful that I published MATUNUCK when I did, in November, 2020, and enabled my father the chance to read it.

He died four months later in March, 2021.

In hindsight, if I had never sold a single copy of any book I’ve ever written, it wouldn’t have mattered to me. Because that hour-long discussion, where he expressed how special my writing made him feel, would be all the reward I’d need to feel fulfilled and successful.

So, how does all this background information relate to this novel; IL PLEURE DANS MON COEUR? First, my father was a French major in college. After joining the Navy in his young twenties, he spent considerable time in the Mediterranean Sea, and traipsing through all the major European cities throughout the early 1960s. Second, he loved Paris and even considered moving the family there when I was very young. Not long before he died, he spent several weeks on holiday in Paris and had the time of his life. And, third, he loved the French poet, Paul Verlaine, who authored the poem “Il Pleure Dans Mon Coeur”, which roughly translates in English to “The Rain in My Heart”. I had to memorize the same poem in high school and also decided it was my favorite as well. So, we shared the same love of depressing French Symbolist poetry. And, we both loved to tell stories.

After my father died, I rediscovered the forty-page manuscript that he’d shown me back in the early 1980’s. I guess I knew it existed. But I’d forgotten about it. And, I never considered trying to help him finish it. I pulled it out of its olive-green manilla folder and read it from end to end. His spelling was atrocious. But his ideas were interesting. And his characters were excellent. The plot didn’t go very far, rather, his tome consisted of a random string of scenes in which his aimless main character ambled from one situation to the next. The novel had great promise, compelling characters and a solid starting point. But my father was gone. The plot was significantly incomplete. And I couldn’t ask him where he was going with it. I had to guess.

His writing style was wordier than mine. He enjoyed sprinkling playful mock formality into his dialog. His characters mixed and matched French and English words and sentences indiscriminately.

I found myself lost in my father’s head every night as I struggled to figure out where to go with his story. I put it away for weeks at a time. But I never stopped thinking about it. I dissected his scenes, split them into self-contained chunks and moved them around in my mind. The more I read his written words, the more I heard his voice and understood his characters. I felt myself channeling his writing style and inventing scenarios, characters and dialog, that I’m confident, reflect how he may have approached similar situations and challenges.

In the end, the project ended up being a true collaboration between us, even though we never discussed it since I was fourteen years old. About a third of the story reflects his exact words with minor editing. Another third of the story represents characters and plot twists I wrote while hearing and channeling his voice in my head. The rest of the story comes completely from my own imagination, reflecting my unique writing style and choices more so than his.

These three elements have mixed, matched, integrated and tied together seamlessly. I know I’ve taken his story in a wild direction that he may not have envisioned. But I’m also confident I’ve done his manuscript justice. I’m excited to have brought it to life and produced a final product that he would have thoroughly enjoyed. It was a cathartic experience to commune with him in this way. And, it will be a rewarding outcome to see it succeed in the marketplace, if it does. And if it doesn’t, I’ll look forward to the reactions from the family and the satisfaction of having created something with him, upon which he’d be proud to stamp our shared names.

My only regret is that I won’t get the chance to have that one last book club discussion about it directly with my father as we have with so many of my other works. But it doesn’t matter. I can hear his voice in my head, and I know how he feels. And that’s good enough for me.

Thank you for reading this unique and special novel. And eternal thanks to my co-writer, Greg McLaughlin Sr. for this and all the gifts you’ve given us throughout the course of our lives.

Sincerely,

Greg McLaughlin Jr.

Acknowledgements

Special Thanks:

John McLaughlin, Beta Reader

Sarah Campagnone, Copyeditor

Contact:

Greg McLaughlin Jr.

E-Mail: [email protected]

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greg.mclaughlin.501

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregmclaughlin/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GMcLaughlin126

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B08P578YTC

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical people, real places and events are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the authors’ imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places and persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.