The Sunday Stories

[[Ed. Note: In honor of the Formula One Miami Grand Prix this weekend, I revisited and reworked an article I originally wrote for Departures magazine back in 2014.

The story behind it is almost as good as the piece itself. The magazine’s editor at the time, the late great legend Richard David Story, was heading off on an African safari. Rushing straight from his office to the airport, he realized — too late —that he had left his carefully chosen stack of “vacation books” at home. The only reading material he had was a single book that had been randomly messengered to his office that very morning.

That book was The Widow’s Guide to Sex & Dating — my first novel. An unfortunate oversight for him, perhaps. A fortunate twist for me. When he returned home, he called to tell me how much he’d enjoyed my lightly fictionalized dating stories** — consumed somewhere between morning massages and sunset game drives. Not a bad setting for my debut. He invited me to lunch soon after, asking me to come prepared with ideas to pitch for the magazine.

How I ultimately ended up in southwest Virginia still makes me laugh. When I pitched Richard a story about car racing, the version in my mind was decidedly more Monaco than Martinsville — Formula One, the Grand Prix, a blur of speed set against a backdrop of impossible glamour. I imagined buttery croissants in the morning, long lunches with Château Margaux, and a rotating cast of charming French men. The problem, of course, was that I thought Formula One racing and NASCAR were essentially the same thing.

Reality, as it turned out, had other plans for me. I didn’t realize my mistake until the Time Inc. travel department sent over my plane tickets.]]