- (Click to see video)
(Transcript from author’s video.)
Let me tell you from the outset, I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life, but this has to be number one on the list. Even though this occurred in 1999, twelve or thirteen years later, I can’t believe that I married this woman and can’t believe all that I went through.
Let me tell you another thing, this novel is no Pretty Woman. This is a stark and brutal look into the shadowy underworld of prostitution, sex addiction, escort services, drug and alcohol addiction, and violence. This is a work of fiction, but it’s definitely based on my personal experience.
So let me tell you the story behind the story. In 1999 I was a divorced and very conflicted businessman and didn’t want to date and didn’t want to do the bar scene and got hold of a phone number for . . .Angie. . .that was her working name.
Angie would come over to my house before she went to work and I would cook dinner and she would tell me these crazy ass stories about her clients, many of whom were conservative businessmen, fundamentalist church-goers, and high-profile political figures there in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Let me say also that while this story takes place in Little Rock, it is a microcosm, in fact could be tame compared to what takes place in Los Angles, New York and Miami.
In any event, Angie would tell me these crazy ass stories and then we’d have sex and she’d go off into the night. Then Angie would come back a couple of days later, I’d cook dinner, she’d tell me more stories, we’d have sex and she’d go off into the night. And after she left, I would sit down and write in this journal I was keeping. I’d write down all the stories she had told me.
This routine went on for a month or two and then things kind of turned dark. Angie got beat up a couple of times and I started having feelings for her. To cut to the chase I agreed to marry her in an attempt to save her from this horrible life that she was leading. Shocking, I know but the marriage didn’t last. It was dysfunctional from day one and we got divorced after just a few months and we parted ways and I lost all contact with her.
After a year or so I went back and looked at my journal and the notes I had kept and it was a fascinating look into this dark underworld. I started writing this novel. I was fortunate enough to work with Rosemary Daniel who is the award winning author of Fatal Flowers: On Sin, Sex and Suicide in the Deep South and seven other books. It took a couple of years to complete the novel and I was looking around in January of 2003 trying to find an agent when I got a call from my attorney who had handled the divorce from Angie. He was a friend of mine and he said “Hey Weintz, I guess you think you must be pretty lucky guy!”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well look on the front page of the paper,” my attorney replied.
I got a paper and there on the front page was an article about this terrible murder that had occurred and about the murder trial. It appears that after I divorced Angie that she went off and hooked up with another guy who was an alcoholic, drug addict and physically abusive, and in the middle of the night Angie picked up a hand gun and shot him.
Angie was tried and convicted of capital murder. Needless to say, this turn of events totally depressed me. It blew me away and I put the entire writing project on hold. The novel I had written had sort of a romantic, Pretty Woman ending and reality didn’t match up to that, so I put the book away and forgot all about it.
In 2010, in the middle of the recession, I had lost everything and I was packing my belongings to move from my house when I came across this CD with the manuscript. I printed out what I had written years before and re-read it and it was pretty good, except for the ending. I went back to work and re-wrote the entire novel and again I worked very intensely with Rosemary Daniell and here we are today.
I believe you’ll find it an interesting if brutal and stark look at Angie’s world. And I’ve got to warn you again, this is not a “pretty woman” but I think you’ll find it interesting.
Angie’s Story is available through Amazon in paperback and on Kindle Click Here
