The Memory of Water — J.T. Lawrence

Slade Harris will do anything for a story. He doesn't think twice about jumping out of a plane or conducting disastrous love affairs to gather material for his writing. But his selfish life seems to be catching up with him: stumbling through his late thirties hopeless and a little drunk,his agent after him like a particularly stubborn strain of venereal disease, waiting for his next money-spinning Work Of Genius which is a year overdue and which Slade has not yet started. To celebrate his dismal situation (Everest-like debt, unrequited love, a fear of turning into his sad, shuffling father and the severest case of writing block ever experienced by man), Slade has a dazzling, dangerous idea, which sets off a motion of events that will change his life forever. It's going to be Slade's ultiamte story, and all he's hoping for is to survive it.