Authors wanting to write about a major life upheaval in their life must decide the best way to do so—write a memoir, or fictionalize aspects of the story and instead write a novel based on true events. The first offers the chance to unsettle readers with naked fact; the second allows you to maximize the story’s impact along a certain premise. Either way, you endeavor to write an engaging story that ultimately arrives at the truth about life and human nature. After years of waffling on this front I’ve made a decision that delivered me right to the doorstep of my second traditional book deal! As I wrote in a previous countdown post , this summer I’ve been putting together a couple of novel proposals. I’d been working on shaping my second novel since April, writing then boiling down an extended synopsis and polishing the first fifty pages until my agent said, “I love it.” Hoping that love could carry us into a two-book deal, she asked about a third project. I did have a story...