Adventures in writing…

On one of the online boards I participate on, we are doing a collaborative writing project where each participant gets the last sentence of the previous person’s piece and then continues the story in their own words. Here’s the one I received:

I start to run, calling her name but she disappears and only the cold wind blows around my head…

And here’s how I continue the story:

I come to a halt beneath the strange yellow cloud that had been hovering above the spot where she’d vanished. I gaze up to see that at its center is an inverted funnel from which a stream of tiny leaves issues forth, gently floating down to greet my upturned face. For a moment, time stands still and but for the sound of my heart beat echoing in my ears, the silence is so great that I wonder if I’ve gone deaf. Bending down onto one knee, I scoop up a handful of leaves and carefully deposit them into the pocket of my jacket.

Standing up, my gaze shifts to the houses down the street. I see a red brick chimney jutting out in the distance and recognize it to be mine. My neighborhood. My house. As if of their own volition, my feet begin to move toward the houses, the cloud slowly receding behind me as I make my way home.

Much later I look out the window and note that the cloud has drifted further down the road and away from town, stalling over a dip in the hills. The pervasive smell of sulphur is disconcerting. After returning home I’d stripped out of my clothes as soon as I’d closed the door behind me. Removing the leaves from my pocket and carefully storing them in a plastic baggie, I’d placed my clothes in the washing machine, set the wash and rinse water temperature to hot and threw in twice the normal amount of detergent. Padding into the bathroom I stepped into the shower. Beneath the stream of hot water I lathered and scrubbed my body’s surface and watched copious amounts of soapy foam spiral down the drain as I rinsed off.

Still, the acrid odor persisted nevertheless. Searching for relief from the smell, I grab a handful of incense, lighting them all at once using the stove’s gas burner. Silently moving around the inner perimeter of my little house, I strategically insert a stick into the tiny crevices of the walls. With each insertion I mouth a silent prayer to the gods for protection from whatever it is that is happening to me… to us all.

Returning to the vantage point of my front room window, I gaze out once again at the inky blue of the late evening sky. The cloud remains strangely illuminated, pale and yellow, sparkling from within as if tiny particles were igniting like stars and shooting off erratically in all directions within its limited expanse, streaking little comet trails and then blinking out just as suddenly as they’d alit.

Living in the O.C.

Boys ‘n toys… (can you say… “would you please donate one of these toward a mortgage so I can stop leasing?”)

So, I stumbled through my work day today, the prospect of attending the Orange County Writers’ Forum meeting tonight at Barnes & Noble over at the Spectrum the worm at the end of the line. I arrived at the proper time, ready for a cup of coffee to fuel me through the meeting, and chatted with the two other members who had shown up. I’m committing to two (you’ve read it here folks, it’s official…) hours per two days a week to my writing beginning May 1st.

While I was at the meeting, Steve and Gabriel had dinner at Panda Express, which also happens to be right next to where the valet parking is for that side of the mall… witness the car$ pictured above… the first one a blue Lamborghini, of which only a smidgen is visible (price tag: $200-300K), then a (what’s that? it’s called a what? thank goodness for men…) Ferrari Enzo (with a ticket price of between $1,000,000 and $1,500,000) and a (and what’s the next one called? I knew they were useful for something…) Mercedes McLaren (costing something over $600K). In any case, there were apparently throngs of people filing out of neighbouring establishments with their cellphones at the ready in order to snap pictures of these things. Wonder if they were all just picking up some Chinese take-out too…?

Another book signing…

(See link in paragraph, below, to order book)

One of my co-workers, an attorney by the name of Bill Scarff (who also edits her books), mentioned several weeks ago that a friend of his, Maureen, will be featured at a book signing at Borders in Crystal Court, to promote her newly released book Pandemic Predator: A Mary MacIntosh Novel.

I purchased a duly signed copy of the book from her. It was great to be able to attend the Q&A session, which picked up momentum once members of the Orange County Writers’ Forum, who organized/sponsored the event, started asking questions. In fact, I wasn’t sure I was going to get a word in edgewise, but did manage to ask several questions. It was all very informative, and encouraging, to know that I wasn’t the only one to deal with some of the issues that I have when attempting to write a story.

I also felt heartened to find a group of writers in the area who gather once a month… I’ve already sent an email requesting for membership. Belonging to a group will be at once exciting as well as motivating.