This one was a given. My A-Z Challenge theme is my work in progress, and Eighteen Crossroads is the title of that work.

Easy-peasy.

Why eighteen? Because there are eighteen MCs: Aniela and her husband Josef, eight of their children, and eight of their grandchildren. Nearly all of the stories are told in the first person. (There’s a reason for this—but man, it’s a challenge!)

Why crossroads? Because each story is about a “crossroads moment” in the life of its MC. We all have such moments. Sometimes we have a choice, and sometimes the choice is made for us. If you read yesterday’s post, see if you can figure out Daphne’s. Is a choice made for her, or does she make a choice herself?

Some of the crossroads intersect quite obviously with those of other characters, as Daphne’s does with her mom’s. But in most cases, they’re more subtle than that.

In the book’s original conception, all of the MCs were also going to be eighteen themselves—I mean, eighteen years old—because eighteen is a time when many of us find ourselves at a crossroads of some kind. But then a couple of characters wound up just remembering events that occurred when they were eighteen, and others found themselves at crossroads that had nothing to do with being eighteen at all.

And I realized two things: 1) Not all of our most significant crossroads moments occur at eighteen (in fact, one of the biggest such moments in my own life came when I was 42), and 2) Just because you’re a writer, that doesn’t mean you have total control over your work or the characters that populate it.

But anyway, there you have it— Eighteen Crossroads.