The Sunday Drive

July 7, 2017July 7, 2017 / Lisa / 4 Comments

Last Sunday we took our friend Jenny and went for a drive along some nearby logging roads. It brought back so many memories.

Crossing Troublesome Creek on Sunday (using a bridge!)

Growing up, we often went for Sunday drives. If mom chose the location, it most likely would be driving the neighborhoods she grew up in. She’d reminisce and tell us stories about things like her dad getting drunk and throwing bread at her across the table. Or having to learn how to butcher rabbits. Or Aunty and the day she showed up. She saw their chimney fire, stopped to help them, also saw a single dad trying to raise a daughter, and stayed as their housekeeper. And once mom married and moved away, she became our surrogate granny.

Aunty helping me play

Those drives weren’t too boring because I’d sit in the back seat and daydream adventures and my own stories. And if we were lucky, and mom and dad felt flush, we’d all get the treat of burgers.

Mom at the cabin.

When dad picked the Sunday destination, a lot of times we’d end up driving logging roads. Mom would pack a picnic lunch. Dad would bring the stack of gold pans. Us kids would get to sit on the tailgate of the truck as we slowly bounced our way up into the woods and mountains.

Dad surveying flood damage

I daydreamed those drives, too, but the stories were different. They almost always involved me slipping off that tailgate, running away into the woods, finding some long-lost tribe of Native Americans, or some My Side Of The Mountain type, where I would live forever out there in the mountains.

Bridal Veil Falls

So here I am, many years later, driving old logging roads with a mountain-kind-of-guy. At home where I always wanted to be. Still daydreaming through those woods though, making up stories as I bounce along in the truck.

Jack’s Pass on Sunday

Endings, In Stories And Life

July 1, 2017July 1, 2017 / Lisa / 5 Comments

The ending of a story is as important as the beginning. Maybe in some ways, more so. The beginning hooks you and draws you in. But the ending is that big sigh of relief, or satisfaction, or sadness. Questions answered and threads tied so you can move on. Sometimes the end is a stop, sometimes a pause before the next linked story.

Sometimes you find an ending with no known beginning

So when there’s no ending, we’re left suspended. No closure. And those are the stories that haunt you. Which is why short stories have such appeal for many; they don’t have a neat conclusion.

But typically, we want those final words.

I’ve said this before but will repeat here. One of the hardest things for me during my years on the fire department was having no ending. You’d be so, so intimately involved with a person at this horrible moment in their life, and then they’d be gone. Whisked off to a medic unit, to a hospital, to the morgue. You’d never find out if the family managed to move on, to put pieces together, to get their lives back, to heal. You’re haunted by those who entered your life so briefly. Some were in your blood-soaked hands as their story ended.

Then there are friends. This afternoon I was reminiscing about a time, way back in the 1980s, when I hurt someone. To this day I don’t know how, or what, I did, only that it was awful enough that they took many years to reach the point where they felt they could have contact with me again. There was no ending to that story. I wasn’t able to apologize or explain, or justify, or help heal, since I didn’t know what I did.

In spite of no ending though, we’ve managed a new beginning over the last couple years, for which I’m thankful.

And yet I’m haunted still by that time. I was very naive back then. Well, heck, I was naive until my thirties when my husband showed up. As an example, there was that time in the 1990s, at a Duran Duran concert, when a man tried to sell me hash and I thought he meant corned beef.

That naive young woman (being photo-bombed by her mother)

I like to hope that this person now knows whatever I did, it was unintentional. But I’ll never know because there was no ending.

In writing, I always know the last line of a story before I begin. I may not know the characters or the story arc yet, but I know how it will end. Writing becomes a discovery of the path leading to those final words.

In real life, those final words are rarely so clear, or the path so easy to walk.

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Cover Designs

June 14, 2017 / Lisa / 1 Comment

I’ve hired a new cover designer and am thrilled with the concepts she’s sent over. Monica Younger is professional and takes her time to get to know the setting, theme, characters, and plot to give her ideas for the covers.

Matter of fact, I’m so enthusiastic now, that I’ve asked her to consider redoing all the book covers with a theme in mind. We’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, here is the first draft of the cover I’ve chosen.

SUNSHINE ON MY SHOULDERS5