The Story Behind The Story

My sister Michelle Lehnardt and my daughter, Lizzy in 2012 about a year after we wrote the screenplay. (You’ve got to love the old Instagram filters.)

Today is my sister’s birthday 🎉

And it would be no exaggeration to say there’d be no INFLUENCE and probably no other books written by me without my sister’s enthusiastic encouragement.

INFLUENCE is dedicated to Michelle and my daughter Lizzy (pictured above circa 2012) because they helped me write the original Influence, a screenplay titled “Stars Fall.”

I wrote about their involvement in my acknowledgments at the end of INFLUENCE but since not everyone reads that far, I wanted to share the story behind the story here.

This book began over a decade ago with a conversation with my daughter while making dinner. I suggested that all modern rom-coms can be traced back to Jane Austen. Lizzy, who was thirteen, asked what a modern Persuasion would look like. I mused that Sir Walter Elliot would definitely be a washed-up TV star who always watched reruns of his show. From there, we started brainstorming. Soon Lizzy and I were writing a screenplay. We didn’t know what we were doing but we were having a blast. 

When I mentioned this project to my sister, Michelle, she wanted in. Anyone who knows my sister knows she’s a force of nature. So while Lizzy and I had been sporadically working on the screenplay, Michelle got stuff done.  She purchased screenwriting software and made us set deadlines. When we neared the end, she flew to San Diego for one last writing marathon. We made a road trip to Los Angeles and finished the script in a hotel room a few blocks from the Santa Monica Pier.

My sister did her best to sell the screenplay, which was a challenging feat. She found some interest from one producer, who said we had a “knack for screenwriting.”  This one compliment had us walking on air for months. But we eventually came back to earth and returned to our various lives. I wrote a Sci-Fi thriller; Lizzy went to high school and then college. My sister helped with political campaigns, wrote a book, and went to Oxford. Still, as the years flew by, we all held a soft spot for the story of April Rain and Freddy West. 

Over a decade later, I dusted off our screenplay and turned it into a book. I owe so much to both Lizzy and Michelle for helping me write this story. The book INFLUENCE is quite different from our screenplay, but their fingerprints are  all over it. Thanks to both Michelle and Lizzy for cheering me on as I turned Freddy and April’s story into a book.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer but for decades I never finished anything I wrote. That screenplay was the first project I completed. That felt so good, I decided to tackle a novel.That’s when I began DELETED.

I don’t think I would have ever finished a manuscript without my sister’s confidence and enthusiasm. I am so lucky to have a sister who believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself.