An author’s path to naming a tale
By Lucy Appadoo
I chose my novel’s title to be A Life By Design for two reasons.
The first one has to do with my character, Elena who aspires to study fashion design in Milan. It takes a lot of coaxing with her authoritative father, but she eventually gets her wish.
The second reason, which I explore in more detail below, is about finding yourself along with your life journey.
In A Life By Design, Elena initially struggles to have the life she richly desires due to a series of obstacles towards her ambition. As mentioned above, Elena struggles to convince her father of her ambition to travel to Milan. She resolves this by coming up with a plan that works and appeals to her father’s need for dominance and certainty in his daughter’s safety.
Elena soon arrives in Milan and finds she’s being terrorised by someone through phone calls and other threatening incidences (I won’t divulge too much here). She develops a love interest too.
Another conflict occurs with a fellow student who is proving to be too close for comfort. She wonders if he is the one harassing her, but he denies it.
Given her independent and feisty streak, Elena is displays resilience, independence, stamina, and problem-solving ability. She makes the right choices for herself, given she created a life by design. In other words, a life that is created by her own actions, mental strength, and endurance. A life that is of her own choosing and not dictated by how others believe she should live her life.
These qualities in Elena reflect how you have the ability to design your own life; to be free to live a life of meaning and purpose by making the right choices, driven by your own inner desires.
A life truly designed by you.
How can you create your own life by design? What happens to Elena throughout the story? You can find out in the pages of A Life by Design.
Lucy Appadoo
is a prolific reader and author of the Friends In Crisis Series. After a childhood spent reading and imagining escapist worlds, Lucy has put her imagination into stories. Her work as a rehabilitation counsellor, and former work as a counsellor in private practice, have led to an interest in writing inspirational stories about authentic, driven women who manage adversity with strength and heart. She writes in the genres of romantic suspense/thrillers with significant life themes and contemporary romance.
Lucy’s interests include researching crime stories and news to inspire her work, watching crime thrillers and suspenseful movies, travel, exercising, reading for entertainment or knowledge, meditation, and spending time with friends and family. She also appreciates her Italian background and culture, which has inspired her to write imaginative stories about her parents’ childhoods, leading to The Italian Family Series novels.
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