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Please read this! I’ve thought long and hard
about it, and I’ve come to a brave decision. It
might up-end my life but it is honest and true. When I
first wrote LACEY’S DAY several years ago, it was
based on a promise I made back in 1998 to someone Lacey
is based upon. The reality is that back then, I was horribly
alone in a large white house while my breadwinning wife
traveled excessively. I was still getting over brain surgery
from a few years before, I had lost my business to Orange
County’s bankruptcy—things were not going
good for me, so I wrote like crazy.
Then, one night, I met a woman on the burgeoning Internet.
For five intense months, we emailed more and more frequently,
and I got to know her and her problems. I was interested
in Buddhism, so was she. After a while, I truly fell in
love with her, as Ted fell in love in these pages, and
we almost met on a heart-throbbing visit to Chicago: me
from California, her from New York.
But, unfortunately when I went to Chicago I was detained
at a relative’s party. Afterwards, I went to the
wrong terminal at O’Hare, and frustratingly never
met her. I was dying at the excrusciatingly near miss!
Afterwards, she was angry at having traveled all the way
from New York and not meet me. I don’t blame her—I
also was devastated.
That was 1998. Five years later, consistent with my promises
to her, I based a book on our five month adventure. That
book came out in 2004, supposedly fiction. Well, the truth
is that it was wrapped in fiction to make it readable,
and the ending is how I really wanted our advenure to
end. Most of the rest are actual emails and Instant Messages
that she and I sent to each other, virtually verbatim,
during that magic five months. This is the true story
of our time together on the Internet in 1998.
In 2004, when I tracked down “Lacey” to let
her know I had written the book about our online relationship,
a virtual powder keg exploded. She wanted no part of my
book, even wanted me to remove her name completely from
it—so I did! That’s when I changed her name
to Lacey.
So, I will release LACEY’S DAY as a nonfiction work
with the qualification that the beginning scene is there
to give Ted a motivation and the scene at the end is the
way I would have liked it to play out at the time had
we actually met, which we never did! How romantic!
But, the rest is reality. For years I secretly pined for
“Lacey” and played our song a lot. In 1998
I had had an intense five month experience with her that
stands alone in my life and I don’t apologize for
it one bit; it taught me how intense love can be. This
second edition is the crowning of that realization, and
I’m glad I lived the experience!
While I will never reveal who “Lacey” is,
there’s a part of my heart that believes that “Lacey”
is also sentimental about the time we “spent together,”
and has pined for me as I did for her. I still wish I
could meet her in a way and just chat about our experience!
It’s just a romantic illusion, I guess. But the
life I have with my wife is wonderful and couldn’t
be touched by Lacey, who was a wonderful dream during
a tough time, but the reality is something I guess I’ll
never know. So, enjoy this dip into reality. Share the
feelings of two people who were in love but never met
and see how it might have ended! But don’t read
ahead. Just enjoy the slow crescendo and feel the love!
Jack Eadon
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