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<\/a>Scott Stevenson\u2019s book started out as a tribute to his wife, Susan. The couple had gone through a rough patch during which they\u2019d lost their money in the stock market, faced Susan\u2019s breast cancer diagnosis, helped Scott\u2019s sister through a nightmare divorce and seen the 2003 Cedar Fire encroach on the home they had just finished building in the Cuyamaca Mountains. <\/p>\n\u201cWe were sitting on the back deck watching the sunset, and I told her, \u2018I\u2019m going to write you a love letter and base it on the experiences we\u2019ve had over the last few years,\u2019\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n
An architect and builder by profession, Stevenson, 58, had no idea how to launch his writing project. Later \u2013 when he still hadn\u2019t begun \u2013 he hoped his wife had forgotten he\u2019d ever mentioned the idea, but she hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cEventually I started writing, and then I couldn\u2019t stop,\u201d he said. \u201cI wrote like I talk and like I design a house. I\u2019d close my eyes and picture the scene in my head and then write it down as if I were telling it to Susan.\u201d<\/p>\n
He hadn\u2019t kept a journal but he was able to dig back through receipts, medical bills and legal documents to get the dates and information he needed. As he wrote, the work became easier and the quality of his writing evolved. He produced well-drawn characters, conveyed authentic emotions and created colorful passages, such as his description of the morning he and his wife discovered a white owl on their property: \u201cThe cab of the truck is drafty, the heater works sporadically, the days are bone cold and a sprinkling of snow covers the ground. The sun has yet to make its appearance, and the early morning fog still clings to our side of the mountain.\u201d<\/p>\n
The final result was 1,500 pages of a manuscript he edited down to 450 and titled \u201cLooks Easy Enough: A Joyful Memoir of Overcoming Disease, Divorce and Disaster.\u201d The finished product brings together all the suspense of a Dan Brown thriller and the philosophical search of Elizabeth Gilbert\u2019s \u201cEat, Pray, Love.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cDifferent people relate to different sections of the story,\u201d Stevenson said. \u201cSome say it\u2019s an adventure story, others say it\u2019s a do-it-yourself book and others a funny book. One person called it a grown-up love story.\u201d<\/p>\n
The memoir is all of those things. Short chapters focusing on each of the crises the couple faced make the book a fast read. It opens in flashbacks to 1999, a year after Scott and Susan married, with chapters about the Cedar Fire\u2019s sinister approach interspersed at key points to warn readers that even more loss might be waiting in the couple\u2019s future. <\/p>\n
Scenes detailing how they built their home on weekends with the help of Scott\u2019s family provide welcome relief from the calamities befalling them on other pages. And despite the grim experiences the author recounts, many of the episodes are laugh-out-loud funny. In one he is distracted by the hair plugs of a doctor who is treating his wife. In another he drives home from the building site without pants because he accidentally drenched them in tar and had to leave them behind. As he drives down Interstate 8, he avoids 18-wheelers whose drivers could look into his truck and discover his predicament. <\/p>\n
\u201cHumor played a big part in getting through these tough times,\u201d Stevenson said. \u201cNot that we went around cracking jokes, but we were able to step back and be receptive to the possibility of something funny happening.\u201d <\/p>\n
Some of the real-life characters in the book aren\u2019t so funny \u2013 from his sister\u2019s abusive ex-husband to the doctors who were too busy to answer Susan\u2019s questions and the attorneys who enabled his sister\u2019s divorce to drag on to the point where she had no money and her house had been foreclosed upon. Their names are changed and their personalities disguised in the story. <\/p>\n
Stevenson\u2019s personal philosophy underlies everything he writes. Raised in South Dakota as the grandson of a Methodist minister, today he doesn\u2019t identify with any organized religion. But he believes humans are put on Earth for a purpose, and he\u2019s spending his life trying to figure out what his might be. <\/p>\n
His curiosity began in high school when he saw a short film about a man who spends his whole life unsuccessfully trying to find his way out of a purple cube. Eventually, as an old man, the character opens a door and then falls over dead. <\/p>\n
\u201cI thought then, \u2018What if I spend my whole life trying to grasp the wrong door and then on my deathbed realize what life was really about and what I should have been doing instead of wasting it,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI also don\u2019t care for pain, and life is much less painful if you can see it as one big learning experience, if you can say, \u2018Hey, I chose for this to happen so I could learn from it.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
Stevenson believes in reincarnation \u2013 part of what he calls \u201cthe game of life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re born, you learn as much as you can in one life, you die, you come back,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you can help other people and have fun along the way, great. That\u2019s what got me through all this.\u201d <\/p>\n
When the book was finished, he sent it to 120 agents and publishers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing how many ways there are to say \u2018Thanks, but no thanks,\u2019\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Armed with \u201cHow to Self-publish for Dummies,\u201d he set out to publish the book himself. With the same ingenuity that enabled him to build his own home, often even designing some of the tools he needed for special projects, he established his own publishing imprint. He named it Deadora Press after the cedars that had perished in the fire. <\/p>\n
Now he and Susan are busily marketing the book, which is available at many San Diego bookstores, including The Grove, The Book Tree and Controversial Bookstore in Uptown. “Looks Easy Enough” is also available online from amazon.com and at lookseasyenough.com.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be really nice if someone could read this book and realize that if this turkey and his wife could make it through all this, there\u2019s no reason why they can\u2019t also make it through being unemployed or having a bad diagnosis or a forest fire or an earthquake,\u201d he said. \u201cYou just do what it takes to make it through.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Glenda Winders SDUN Book Reviewer Scott Stevenson\u2019s book started out as a tribute to his wife, Susan. The couple had gone through a rough patch during which they\u2019d lost their money in the stock market, faced Susan\u2019s breast cancer diagnosis, helped Scott\u2019s sister through a nightmare divorce and seen the 2003 Cedar Fire encroach […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1305,"featured_media":243438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Local author self-publishes a memoir detailing loss, laughter","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1305"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}