Most of my life I can remember wanting to be an author. Unfortunately, I never could find the time to fulfill that dream. After retiring from TWA/American Airlines, time was no longer an excuse. Subject became my hangup. To get me motivated, my lovely wife suggested I write my memoirs. “After all, everyone else is writing theirs, so why not you. You have had a intriguing and adventurous life,” she commented.
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. After all, I am the only person who knows all my memories. When I pass, they will turn to dust and evaporate with me. Writing them down would give me eternal life on this earth. An added bonus will be a history book for my descendants. They will be able to discover where their craziness came from.
I started writing my memories in a big notebook. Soon the pages became jumbled with arrows pointing everywhere. Notes were scribbled here and there and I soon had a complete mess on my hands. Again, my lovely wife came to my rescue. “Why don’t you get a computer?” Brilliant idea honey! But then the computer and I had issues right from the start. We finally came to an agreement that I should take a class and learn how it worked. We still had issues, but they are usually resolved. It still took me two more years to complete the memoir. Behold: The Comeback Kid, The Memoirs of Thomas L. Hay was published in November 2011.
The process was both an invigorating whirlwind of self-enlightenment and a intense emotional trip. Cried many tears from both joy and pain. To jog my memories, I used song phrases. Songs would remind me of a person, a place, or a time in my life. An example: Heartbreak Hotel, when my first wife informed me she was divorcing me. Life is but a series of events, much like a box of assorted chocolates. You never know what could come next. I choose the title “The Comeback Kid” because of the many peaks and valleys I had endured in my life. Somehow, I always discovered a way to climb back to the peak and leave the valley behind.
After publishing my memoirs, it occurred to me that I had some mysterious phenomena buried within my subconscious. Shortly after our divorce, my first wife had claimed that we had been abducted by aliens during our short marriage. This was news to me as I had no memory of it. She said she divorced me because her spirit had persuaded her to become a vegetarian, fast, and abstain from sexual activity. This cleansed her soul, body, mind, and melted the memory blocks instilled by the aliens. It exposed traumatic experiences that had been buried within her subconscious. I never believed her. Like most people who had claimed to be abductees, I just assumed she had a fertile imagination or maybe had a few loose marbles.
However, after writing my memoirs, I became tormented to investigate the probability of her claim. Since I could stand to lose a few pounds and age had diminished my sex drive, I adopted her ascetic lifestyle for awhile. O-M-G… I had to rewrite my original memoirs. Behold: An Abduction Revelation: The Comeback Kid Returns was published in October 2012, (second edition Oct. 2014) by Balboa Press, a Div. of Hay House. A year later, its sequel popped into my head, “Abduction Revelation II”. Then I decided to publish an abridged version of both books into one. Behold: “The Abduction Chronicles”.
Who are the abductors? Where did they come from? Where are they hiding? Do they even exit? The answers to all those questions, plus many more were revealed when my memory blocks melted. My ex-wife had only scratched the surface. What I discovered may startle and torment your reality.
Determining the genre gave me a headache. Is it a memoir or is it a sci-fi novel? Is it reality, a dream, a hallucination, or my imagination gone wild? Could my wild imagination be hidden memories? I don’t try to convince the reader one way or the other. I let them determine what they want to believe. However, I did remind them what Albert Einstein said about the mysterious: “The most beautiful thing mankind can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand in awe, is as good as dead, his eyes are closed and he is a stranger unto himself.”
The books are written in a rollicked conversational style. I used many common idioms we all use in everyday conversations. Like: “What in Sam Hill?”
Buckle up! You are in for one wild ride. Available paperback and Kindle on Amazon:
About the Author
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