Catch Up and Christmas

I've spent the past two days floating in the euphoria of finishing the serial.  Sunday, when I posted the epilogue, I felt like my head was spinning off its axis with relief.  Either that or it was the Italian wine I drank whilst making Russian teacakes, followed by dancing around the house with wild abandon and sheer delight.

Back when I first started writing--when I was around eleven or so--all I could really manage at that stage were short stories, because really, I was just a kid.  I remember that first story was about a girl named Cricket and she liked to solve mysteries.  I wrote with a fountain pen (because that's what real writers did...right?) and I filled it with purple ink, sometimes red--what can I say, I thought it was dramatic.  I still have the stories, though the red ink has faded to brown and looks like dried blood.  (My eleven-year-old self smiles and says how cool is that?)

Anyway.  Once the serial got packed away, I had a flood of ideas wash through my mind.  It's like the dam burst.  The novella was finally done and all the flotsam and jetsam I've stored away over this past year bobbed to the surface eager to be salvaged.  It was really amazing.  I thought maybe the demons had fried my brain with that blasted Library of Souls, but no...I just needed to get it out of my head.

In high school I used to haunt this most excellent used bookstore and one day stumbled across O. Henry.  I've written about this before, I think.  Anyway, short stories became my forte.  This was before flash fiction became the coined phrase.  I love the succinctness, the brevity in telling a story in just so many words.

So, I'm toying with the idea of writing 12 short stories in 2014, one for each month.  Not so grueling as the serial, and they could be any length, whatever works for the tale.  I'm not sure if I want them to connect, or be totally separate entities.  I already have the first one written in my head, but I'm not getting into anything remotely concrete until the new year.  Right now it just feels really good to be free, to let my mind wander...

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Yesterday I had to run some errands, a mistake of epic proportions.  I might have mentioned before that my little town is basically nothing more than a crossroads for travelers on their way elsewhere.  Traffic was insane; nearly every car was from California, though I also saw an inordinate amount from Arizona.  I think the locals must know to stay home in the last days before Christmas; I had to learn the hard way.  I tried twice--morning and afternoon--to go grocery shopping.  The first attempt, I couldn't find a place to park and after going around and around with a dozen other folks, I gave up.  The second try was very short-lived.  The line to get into the parking lot wound out onto the highway for at least two blocks.  I just changed lanes and drove home.

 

This morning I gulped my breakfast, tossed the boys in the car, was at the store by 9:30, and still barely found a place to park.  Managed to get my stuff and get out in record time, though I was shocked to discover, as I maneuvered between the hordes, that most of the people were actually Christmas shopping.  For gifts.  On Christmas Eve??!!  Ah well, it's the thought that counts, I suppose.

 

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And on that note...

 

 

~~ Have a wonderful holiday, dear readers ~~