I released a romantic comedy on Amazon Kindle titled “One Lucky Girl,” a short story inspired by an actual event from 2015. In fact, as I write in the introduction, the opening scene is exactly what happened to me when I shared my feelings for someone who didn’t feel the same. The scene and dialogue are 100 percent accurate.

Thankfully, she let me down easy. Heck, I even put her name on the dedication page of the story. Got to give credit where credit is due, right?

After she rejected me, I continued for months to bug her for just one date until she finally relented. Long story short: We’ll be celebrating the fourth anniversary of that first date in less than a month.

I learned two valuable lessons from that rejection: Take a chance because no one ever died from rejection and never give up on love. Sounds trite but it’s not easy. It took me 46 years to learn those lessons.

In my short story “One Lucky Girl,” the main character Jack tells a girl named Dani that he likes her. She rejects his affection but not his friendship. At least Jack had the cajones to put his feelings for her out there in the Universe. But what if the Universe not only heard Jack but decided to get actively involved in getting those two crazy kids together?

That’s the gist of “One Lucky Girl,” my stab at romantic comedy.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give Kumquat credit for partly inspiring the story. Kumquat is a poignant romantic comedy novel written by Jeff Strand, one of my all-time favorite authors.

Strand is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated and Splatterpunk Award-winning horror author who happened to write one of the best romantic comedies I’ve ever read. Strand took a chance on writing outside of his usual genre and unknowingly gave me the push to do the same.

Here’s Amazon link to the Kindle version of “One Lucky Girl” if you want to check it out.