Meet Ana from my upcoming novel, Coffee Stains.
More than anything, Ana wants to be successful …in something. She wants a steady income and independence and at almost twenty-five, she’s willing to do just about anything to skip a few steps and get to the successful part. She’s tired of living with her brother and not having much of a purpose other than working at a coffee shop while commiserating about the wrong choices she’s made in the past.
One night after helping get a stranger home one night, she’s given that chance to skip ahead.
The stranger turns out to be a young woman who had a full-ride scholarship to the local university. Despite Ana helping her home, the young woman passes away and the grandmother, in her grief, offers Ana to take over the scholarship. Ana jumps at the chance, not knowing the kind of work it will take her to graduate.
In over her head at the university, she accepts help from a professor and finds herself drawn into a relationship. She doesn’t question the monotony or whether she really wants the relationship until Marlon from her high school years appears in her life.
Marlon isn’t the only one that adds to Ana’s stress. When the professor’s ex-wife comes back to town and takes a job at the university, Ana realizes that her use of the scholarship is not only in jeopardy, but she could get permanently blacklisted for fraud.
Just like with us in real life, the stress points in Ana’s life bring her a moment of reckoning. It isn’t that all the little things need to get resolved, it’s that what Ana needs is to finally stand up for herself and make decisions instead of life, karma and other people deciding for her. She needs to stop riding out life and being someone that events happen TO, and start being someone who chooses the events she PARTICIPATES in.
Can she grow into herself, take responsibility for the mistakes she has made and for her lift drifting or will she sink into oblivion and once again allow others to define her life for her?
Do you know someone like Ana? Fictional or non-fictional?