Author publishes memoir — on her own terms

At 68, Davida Rosenblum had every neophyte writer's dream. An agent. A book idea the agent wanted. A publisher.

And she turned it down.

The book the agent wanted wasn't the book the Beverly, Mass., resident wanted to write.

Now, at 81 - "and a half," as Rosenblum likes to point out - she has written that book and published it herself.

She wrote her memoir, "Reflections," (Xlibris at Xlibris.com) frankly, honestly and on her terms - just the way her late husband, Ralph, encouraged her to do.

Very different from the book the agent wanted 13 years ago.

Ralph, Woody Allen's film editor, had just died and a book he'd written had just hit the stores. The agent wanted a tell-all tale on life with a difficult man, equal parts painful and rewarding. Rosenblum wasn't interested in exploiting her late husband.

She wanted to write a book on the joy of discovering new love or rediscovering an old love, Joe, whom she'd met at 20 when she was in college and working toward an eventual doctorate and an assistant professorship at Lehman College in the Bronx.

Rosenblum reconnected with Joe two months after Ralph died and wrote a column about the experience in The New York Times "Lives" column.

The piece generated a great deal of comments and letters from readers. Most of it positive.

"There was a letter from a 15-year-old Catholic girl who thought it was dreadful I was fornicating with a man who wasn't my husband," Rosenblum remembers with a smile.

The column generated the interest in a book about Ralph.