The Royals: Five Retired Journalists Solve a Mystery

My friend Ron Kolb, and I have been talking about writing a novel together for 50 years. And talking and talking. We’d probably still be at it if my wife, Jody Jaffe, finally fed up, hadn’t ordered us to “stop blathering and start writing.”

So, we did. Our book, “The Royals” is about five retired journalists who set out to uncover the truth behind the mysterious suicide of a local high school football star.

However, that’s just the plot.

The book’s soul is the search for relevance in a world that discounts aging and the reigniting of the flame of love.

I was a newspaper guy for 35 years. My career began in 1970 when I got hired by the Riverside (California) Press-Enterprise. That’s where I met Ron, a rookie sportswriter from Penn State.

“The Royals” is named after the manual typewriters we started out on at the Press-Enterprise. And the five protagonists are based on Ron and me and our colleagues at the paper. 

But the flame of love? That has a different genesis. Here’s how it’s introduced in the book:

And it all began with Lori. Natalie Lorelei Rooney.

The first time I saw her, she was sitting in the News & Times’ glassed-in meeting room, interviewing with Gordon for a job. She was diminutive, with sharp, Hepburn-esque features (some Audrey, some Katherine) framed by a thundercloud of flaming-red hair. She seemed to swagger just sitting there. I saw her smile. She smiled brilliantly. 

My brain started melting. 

I quickly wrote a note on a strip of copy paper, folded it, and walked over to the meeting room.  “So sorry to interrupt, Gordon,” I said, sticking my head in the door. “But I thought you should see this before the afternoon news meeting.”  I handed him the note, smiled at the redhead, and walked back to my desk.

Gordon unfolded the paper, glanced at my message, looked across the newsroom at me, and scowled. Then he tried to hide a smile. My note had only two words: “Hire her.” 

That’s a true story; that’s not the true redhead. 

In the book, the narrator, Scott Thorton, carries a torch for Lori through different jobs, different wives, and different lives until they reunite, along with three others from their early newspaper days, in retirement on an island outside Seattle.

The real diminutive redhead is Jody, my “stop blathering” wife. She and I met in the late ’90s, after our own job changes and broken marriages. She, too, had been in the newspaper business. In fact, a profile she wrote of Jessica Hahn is included in the package that won the Gold Medal Pulitzer Prize for public service in the late ‘80s.

By the time we met, she’d written three horse mysteries. And, early on in our relationship, we wrote a couple of rom-coms together. Then, nearly 20 years ago, we left the novel-writing world behind to start a horse farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

So, when Ron and I began “The Royals” we were in desperate need for advice on our Lori character. How would she think? How would she talk? How would she fight for relevance in her retirement years? How could we make her real?

Characters in novels are often (if not always) infused with the emotions and experiences of their authors.  “The Royals” is no different. Our characters are retired journalists, and so are we. They’ve loved and lost and loved again. We have, too.

But what’s inside you isn’t always enough.

To make our Lori real we needed the emotions and life experiences of an outside expert. Voila! Jody. She’s an expert at being a woman, and she became our surrogate Lori.

We would write a conversation between Lori and Scott and then give it to Jody. She’d rewrite our clumsy, cardboard Lori into a living, vibrant woman.

Lori and Scott circle around each other through the first half of the book and eventually go to bed together. It’s disastrous. But, in a way, the disaster clarifies their true feelings. And forces them to honestly face their ever-shortening future. 

Ron and I thought that we should boil down this moment into an email from Lori to Scott. When we showed it to Jody. . .well, I’d like to say she smiled gently and helped us rewrite it. In reality, she groaned. Then she turned to her inner Lori and wrote this:

Scott,

This is take 20 for this email. I’ve been writing and rewriting it since I left you at the Rosewood. Now, three hours later, I’m hitting the send button. If I don’t, I’ll keep rewriting for a week.

I don’t really know what it’s about because I’m figuring it out as I go. Remember when Aaron once told us, “I write to think”? Well, that’s what I’m doing now. Writing, thinking, trying to figure out what I want, where to go, and how not to disappoint you. 

We’ve had such a connection, or maybe misconnection, over the years (assume there’s a smiley face emoticon here). And the beginning of our story (was it really 45 years ago?) has provided me with sweet memories that I visit more frequently than you might imagine. We were both young, and our trajectories took us in separate directions. But I’ve often wondered, “Is he the one who got away?” Especially after my disastrous choice of the one who should have gotten away (grimace emoticon).  I thought I needed somebody responsible and organized. You were fun and adventurous. I thought I needed somebody to patch up my cracks. You weren’t a carpenter. After all these years, I’ve learned that I need to patch up my own cracks.

So when we reconnected on Cambridge Island, it both excited and scared me. I was finally confronted with the reality and the possibility of you and of us.  What if you/us weren’t as wonderful as I’d imagined? You know how different dreams and realities can be. And then there are all those issues that I’ve packed on in 45 years. Is there an emoticon for Lyme disease? Or losing my parents? Or my profession? What about menopause and aging? Dementia?  Is there a vibrator emoticon?   

  What I think I’m trying to say is this: please bear with me. We’re exciting together. I love it. But I’m wary of relationships. Not only because I’ve had bad ones but because I’ve been independent a long time, and I love that, too. It’s easy for an older woman to fade into the woodwork. I’m 69. I refuse to disappear.

Writing, thinking. Here’s something I’ve thought about a lot: You got me to say, “I love you.” That’s a big step for me. I want you in my life. Just give me time to work out the “how much” and “how quickly.” 

But let me say it again: I love you. I love us.

Lori

When I read Jody’s version, my brain started melting just like Scott’s.

Now, Jody has just published her own new book, “Commander Speaks.” Of course, it’s about horses; she’s an addict. But, like “The Royals,” it also features a rekindling of love between two characters — who first fell in love when they were in high school.

While writing a scene about their initial breakup, Jody turned to her own outside expert — me. “How would a 16-year-old boy feel about this?” she asked. Well, I was once a young man, so I wrote some lines of dialogue that I know would have been true for me some 55 years ago.

In a blurb for our book, Paul Levine, bestselling author of those Jake Lassiter legal thrillers, ends with these words:

 “‘The Royals’ is geezer fiction at its best, laced with sly observations, wry humor, and wise meditations on aging and the meaning of life. I hope John Muncie and Ron Kolb have plenty of typewriter ribbons for their team’s next outing.” 

In fact, Ron and I are talking about a sequel. And part of our “team” will certainly be Jody Jaffe.