It’s 12:38 am and I’m burning the midnight oil. I’m working on a short movie script that will be shot this month.

But when I listen to this song all I can think about is the story that I can’t tell. I think about Alberto and Caridad. I think about Manolo and how much he loved Caridad and the circumstances that kept them apart and kept him from loving his daughter the way she demanded.

Alberto, Cardidad and Manolo are the protags in the novel that has kicked my butt going on a year. I know how the tale ends. I’ve already begun the novel. I’m six chapters in. I can’t continue.

Junot Diaz once said that a writer needs to get to a place where they can write the story they want, i.e. growing up. I’m not sure if I’m grown up yet for Alberto and Caridad. Of course I’m somewhat grown up to even think about them and what they’re story is. Or maybe just grown up enough to write up to chapter six.

True that that chapter contains a crossroads for the couple and things change but I can’t seem to write past that.

Or maybe it’s not that I’m not grown up enough. Maybe I’m just scared.

This book isn’t The Year of Us, my first novel. It’s not like Resentment, my short story or even like Jennie Manning or the Brown Sugar Mysteries. This one is special. This one has my soul and my spirit. This one has a bit of Cuba and of being Cuban. Or rather being the daughter of an exile, the story people don’t get to hear about or chose not to hear. Its not rum, cigars, and sugar cane. It’s not salsa dancing or Latin lovers. It’s about the universal theme of love. Losing it, gaining it, losing it again and then realizing you’ve had it all along.

Although I fear this story, it still calls me. Even now as I’m attempting to finish up a script and have plans to purse my mystery novel afterwards, its there. Caridad is calling me. She’s on the seawall in Havana, being sprayed by the sea, missing Alberto more than she realized she ever could. I miss him too.

What to do? Don’t know. But when this novel is completed, I may just cry.