Guest Post: A Memory and Places That Are Gone by Tom Milani

 

Please welcome back author Tom Milani to the blog today as he shares the backstory of his debut novel, Places That Are Gone. Published by Unnerving, the book releases this Tuesday. The official book launch will be held this coming Saturday at Elaines, 208 Queen Street Alexandria, VA 22314, at noon. Tickets are free and can be obtained through EventBrite.

 

 

A Memory and Places That Are Gone

Tom Milani

In the 1980s, I lived in a garden-style condominium in West Springfield, a Northern Virginia suburb. On my eastbound commute, I shared the road with drivers headed to jobs in the inner suburbs of Washington, DC, or into the city itself. One particular day, before I even left my neighborhood, I saw a woman hitchhiking.

And here, I’ll let Bennett Wilder, the protagonist of my debut novel, Places That Are Gone, take over: “Mary Ann Vecchio. That was Bennett’s first thought when he saw the hitchhiker. She crouched and spread her arms, the look on her face pleading. In tenth grade he’d written a paper about John Filo’s photograph of the high school girl kneeling over the body of Kent State student Jeffrey Miller.”

Like Bennett, I picked the woman up, and even at the time, she reminded me of the girl in the Kent State photograph—of that much, I’m certain. During the twenty minutes she was in my car, she told me about herself, showed me a picture of her son and, before I dropped her off, said, “I wish I could party with you.” 

I never mentioned that conversation to anyone, and when I thought about it, what always stood out was how open she had been with me. I didn’t regret turning down her offer, but as a writer, I’ve always been curious about the turn not made, the question not asked, the phone call not answered.

Flash forward to November 2020 and the pandemic. Several writing friends, along with my wife, convinced me to participate in National Novel Writing Month. For NaNoWriMo, the goal was to write 50,000 words in a month. I took two weeks off my day job and started writing just after midnight on November 1. I didn’t outline, but I had a start: Bennett Wilder picked up a hitchhiker named Liz Messina on his way to work. They talked. She said she wished they could party together. Here was where reality and fiction diverged—Bennett accepted her offer.

That was enough of a hook to get me started, and anytime I got stuck, I upped the stakes. Bennett and Liz both had complicated pasts, and what Bennett envisioned as a break from his failing marriage turned into a far darker cautionary tale. By the end of the month, I’d written 42,000 words, ending with Bennett and Liz literally driving off into the sunset. I let the novel sit like that for a few days before deciding that the ending wasn’t earned. Moreover, I wanted to explore Liz’s character and motivation, which led me to show scenes between her and Bennett in separate chapters, from each character’s point of view. The overlapping narrative paints a fuller picture of their relationship. One of my friends asked why Bennett’s buddy Paul would so readily agree to help him. Answering that question led to several scenes from Bennett’s past, showing him as being morally compromised before he even met Liz.

By October 2021, I was pitching the novel. Some three-and-a-half years later, on May 13, 2025, it will be released.

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4jTja7t

 

Tom Milani ©2025 

Tom Milani (www.tommilani.com) has published short fiction in Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties, Illicit Motions, Janie’s Got a Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Aerosmith, and Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun: Private Eyes in the Materialistic Eighties, among other places. “Barracuda Backfire” was published in 2024 as Book 4 of Michael Bracken’s Chop Shop series of novellas and shortlisted for a Derringer. Places That Are Gone is his first novel. Tom lives in Old Town Alexandria with his wife, glass sculptor Alison Sigethy.