Paul Wright - Diego’s Diary

Need a book and CD for the beach? No problem, Paul Wright’s got you covered.
“Diego’s Diary” is a tale of love, parties, music and romance sparked by MySpace. The fictional but entirely realistic novella follows Ashley, a girl who moves from upstate New York to the beaches of San Diego searching for what’s missing in her life. Along the journey she finds more than she can handle including love and the Mexican Cartel.
Accompanied with the 70-page novella is a CD of 12 songs. The songs, a musical soundtrack to the book, are named after the setting of each chapter. For example, chapter 1 of the book is called “Fifth and Broadway” and so is the first song. The second is “Pacific Beach”. And so on. The songs are both narrative as well as from the characters perspectives.
An original idea Wright came up with while living downtown San Diego close to Little Italy and the Gaslamp District.
“While cruisin the beach I noticed that a lot of the girls were reading books and listening to music. What guy wouldn’t notice right? I thought of a way to provide both as I discovered the city myself. It was a personal challenge to do this on my days off from work. And I figured it'd be a pretty solid ice breaker if I was to approach one of those girls especially if they were reading my book!”
In the opening chapter Ashley moves from Saritoga Springs, New York to San Diego, California. She buys some things and a manuscript to an unfinished book gets placed in her bag at Diego’s Diary, a bookstore located on 5th and Broadway. She can’t put the book down and is compelled to search out the author who ends up working at the bookstore. They start talking over MySpace but he thinks she is a different girl in her group profile pic. In fact he thinks she is the one who her ex-boyfriend cheated on. She doesn’t tell him the truth because she is still insecure and hurt so they begin building a long distance relationship over the phone and Internet although they live in the same city.
“I wrote envisioning I was watching a movie,” Wright says. “Some of the songs were inspired from things happening in my life but most of the material was written imagining the settings, storyline and characters emotions.”
And the theme?
"San Diego is a city unlike any other I've visited. Each part has it's own characteristics that make it unique. Being in that environment is so inspiring. I noticed that despite the differences there were many similarities that brought people together. One was the beauty of the ocean and the sun. And on a deeper level I noticed it is love and the need to belong to something bigger than ourselves. The heart of the story is a redemptive message between two twenthysomethings falling in and out of love."
The book is still in the works and you can be sent an email when it is finished by signing up at DIEGOSDIARY.COM
. - written by Samantha Kaykas-Lee