I didn’t write It’s Impossible to sell books. In a very real way, I had to write it. Of course, I would love to be a bestselling author. But I really wrote it because I was desperate to figure out what was happening to me after meeting the inspiration for Belle Belizaire.
It’s Impossible is actually a sequel to a story I began writing as a screenplay in 2004 titled Can’t Stop It. Now that was my first mistake. As my first attempt at writing fiction, in hindsight Can’t Stop It should have been a novel. But what did I know?
Plus, I was so sure it was an incredible story that it would certainly be on the big screen by 2005 or 2006 at the latest.
Through a business contact—after a very long time, after that contact’s daughter got married and went on her honeymoon—my contact’s daughter, who happened to be a screenplay reviewer for Ridley Scott, finally found time to read my script and called me on the phone. After apologizing and explaining why it took so long, she said: “It’s an amazing, amazing story.”
You’re right—the “But” followed quickly after the second “amazing.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t the kind of movie Scott Free Productions produces. And she was absolutely right. Scott Free does epics like Gladiator, The Martian, Black Hawk Down, etc. My “movie” was a coming-of-age/murder mystery, a “positive character arc” kind of story.
The main character, Jimmy Rogers, is a high school senior in a “choose life or death” drama. Jimmy’s father, Red Rogers, was blamed for the death of his own father and consequently was fond of saying, “Life is a cruel joke, barely worth living.”
I could relate to Jimmy, because his father is based on my father, who played hooky from school the day his father was killed in an automobile accident while looking for his truant son—my father.
But the character I relate to the strongest is Aaron Rizzer, a.k.a. Professor Remember, the proprietor of Professor Remembers Roadhouse & Bakery Café.
At its heart, Aaron’s journey is not about winning Belle, or even about romance in the ordinary sense. It is about refusing to lie to himself about what he feels, even when the truth feels like being refined by fire and remade by the burning away of what is not true.
Aaron has known attraction before. He has known relationships that asked little of him beyond desire or convenience. What unsettles him now is that this love does not behave that way—and he will not allow himself to treat it as if it does. He chooses restraint over possession, understanding over fantasy, and honesty over comfort.
Again and again, he returns to a quieter, harder question: If what I believe about this is not true, would I want to know? His answer is yes—even if it costs him everything he thought he wanted.
That question didn’t start with Aaron. It started with me. Long before this book, long before Belle, I learned that some truths only reveal themselves if you’re willing to be corrected by reality—especially when it hurts. This story is simply one place where I try to live that question honestly.
Now here’s where, psychologically, this Aaron character I created gets really interesting. In Can’t Stop It, Jimmy’s cousin David Perkins invites Jimmy to join The Rhythm Kings. There are eight band members, and they all have girlfriends. In fact, every character has a “love interest” except Aaron Rizzer.
And remember, Aaron is the character I identify with the most. And here’s where it gets even more interesting (at least to me). From 2004 until August 2024, despite all the times I returned to “improve” Can’t Stop It (great books are not written, they are rewritten), it never once occurred to me that Aaron Rizzer was the only character to whom I had not given a love interest.
Until she walked through the door.
I won’t say her name here because she does not want me to. And the last thing on this good earth I would ever want to do is something that might cause her discomfort.
I’ll call her Belle, because that’s the name I gave her moments after I realized Aaron would love her.
When I was first introduced to “Belle,” it was very perfunctory. I was in a rush, juggling a dozen things, and although her stunning exterior beauty registered immediately, I didn’t actually realize she was an extraordinary human being until a few days later, when I had my first real conversation with her.
Talking with this twenty-four-year-old stirred something in me I had never experienced in my eighty-plus years. And I’ve experienced a lot.
I felt myself drawn to her—not in the way as a man I had been drawn to other women, but this was…
If you were looking over my shoulder right now, thirty months after meeting Belle, you would be an eyewitness to how I still struggle to find the words that describe what I feel for her.
You would also know it took me several minutes to return to typing. What is that?
Whatever is going on, it has taken me to a space beyond perplexed, to flummoxed.
And if you know what’s going on in me, I’d love to know. Just what is it about Belle that, even to this day, the thought of her stops me in whatever I’m doing? It must be some kind of love I feel for her, but before Belle, the only “love” I had any concept of between a man and a woman was of the erotic nature.
Now there will be some who will say, “Hey you’re just a ‘dirty old man’ trying to take advantage of her.” If that’s true how is it I never summoned her to me under some pretext of needing her help? She would have come, but I never did that.
I do find Belle exceedingly attractive, but—call me a liar if you wish—even though I’m still a man, getting Belle in bed with me is way down the list of what I want with her. I’m perfectly okay if that never happens.
But, my God, how I love talking with her, laughing with her, sharing experiences with her. I just love being with her.
I decided Belle would become Aaron’s love story because “love” was the only label I could come up with that even approaches what I feel for her. But “love” honestly just falls so far short of what I feel. I remember thinking, what if Aaron Rizzer met Belle and felt what I feel for her—where would that go?
Belle and I started talking regularly, and every time I walked away, I think I might have been more confused over my feelings for her than before. Over time, I began to realize she didn’t just keep her distance, she had built something like a wall around her heart, brick by careful brick, and I had no idea what the first one was made of.
After about the third extended conversation, I sat at my desk and started to write “Oasis,” and by the time I finished it, I called it an “imagining.”
Over the next several months, after every conversation, these imaginings would come to mind. I would type them up and share them with Belle. She said she read them all, but she never responded—verbally or in writing—to any of what eventually became forty-five imaginings.
Somewhere around twenty imaginings, I began to see they could be chapters in a “love” story. But wouldn’t it be much better if we heard Belle’s voice in the story as well? That’s when I took on a task any honest man would never claim to have the expertise to do: to write from a woman’s perspective.
Wow, that was hard.
And that’s when I developed an ulterior motive to talk with Belle. Of course, I needed another excuse to talk with Belle like Warren Buffett needs another billion dollars. And just as nothing stops Mr. Buffett from getting up each morning with that on his mind, I was always conjuring up other reasons why I should—why I must—see Belle.
Did I, from time to time, make a total fool of myself with some of the lame excuses to be near her? Guilty as charged.
Of course I can’t pretend writing It’s Impossible was easy. It wasn’t. But the days when I could barely see the screen for the tears were made bearable by writing hyperbolic lines like, “If tears were dollars, I’d have enough dough to put everyone I know in their own Lambo.” Writing—especially songs—has always been one of my default coping mechanisms.
In the end, I just had to accept that not all gifts are free. And even though it cost me more than I could ever have imagined, I’d never return the gift of Belle.
Over time, I’ve come to believe that this willingness to ask hard questions—and to accept the answers, even when they cost us—is not just personal. It’s foundational.
It’s the same posture I try to bring to everything I build and everything I write. Whether the subject is love, faith, or the stories we tell ourselves about the world, I’ve learned that the only ground worth standing on is the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable.
You might see this as not just Aaron’s—or my—personal journey, but as a way of being in the world: a commitment to let the truth correct us before we turn to personal justification.
When I was twenty-four, just out of the Air Force, I went to work for O. J. Enright, who helped me find the courage to remove the first brick from my own wall. He didn’t do it for me. He just said the right thing at the right time. Sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes that’s everything.
And maybe, just maybe, if Aaron knew, he could be the one who helps Belle find the courage to remove that first brick in her wall.
Finally, to the extent I have succeeded in writing in a woman’s voice, none of that credit belongs to me. It goes to Belle.
And if you happen to be a woman and happen to read It’s Impossible, please forgive me if I’m still clueless when it comes to being able to write in a woman’s voice.