Do you know how beautiful these birds are? Jeff and I have been seeing them on our trips through the U.P. They stand in the fields of wheat and in the ditches and behind the tree lines. They are always a pleasant surprise. There are flocks of them in the farm lands around Sault Ste. Marie and along M-28. On our last trip we saw two of them crossing the road ahead of us. When our truck got too close they lifted their six foot wings and glided, long legs down to the edge of the road and out of our way. I will never forget that sight. I reached for the camera but was too late.
Have you ever thought that you should live your life through the eye of the lens so you won't miss any opportunities to capture a beautiful moment like that? I prefer to capture things on the page. That's why I'm a writer and not a photographer.
Take this farm for example. This is taken on U.S. 31 just north of Acme. Gorgeous? Yeah, how would I describe this scene in print?
I have taken the summer off from writing, or so I've been telling people. I've gotten a lot of sewing done during this time. I finished the Josh Groban Quilt wanna see it?
This is the whole finished quilt and below is a detail of it after he signed it!! Yeah, he did!
I'm going to do more of these! I love face quilts.
During our last trip to the U.P. during that season in Michigan called "Road Construction," I saw something that I had never thought about before. We have all seen those road side crosses put out by grieving loved ones to mark the place where someone has perished in an accident. The construction crew had to dig one of them up and had it leaning against a tree on the other side of a ditch. I had never thought about how big these crosses are, most of which buried in the ground. It was four feet long and was chopped into a sharp point so it could more easily be driven into the ground. I looked at the thing and thought at once about what a great tool it would make for killing a vampire. I told this to Jeff and Soon we were brain storming about the story line. I had to begin writing it at once!
The only writing tools I had in the truck at the time was a spiral notebook which I was using as a journal and a pen. I rarely write fiction with anything but my lap top these days. But I was compelled.
I have to say that I enjoyed the process and when I got home I typed the story into my shorts file. I don't think I changed a word of it. Those of you who have read me know that I am fairly wordy. But this didn't seem to have too many unnecessary words at all. Writing long hand tends to make one choose the language a bit more carefully. I need to explore this idea more thoroughly.
Now, as soon as I can, I need to research where to send this story. Who out there is publishing Vampire fiction? I dare say, I'll find someone! I hope it's original enough. Vampire fiction seems to be everywhere, which is why I hesitated to write any. I've been burned by this before. I wrote a World War II novel once and then found out it was unpublishable because there were too many non-fiction WWII books coming out and they were better and more unbelievable than the fiction.
Meanwhile I'm gearing up a story for Nanowrimo this year. More on that later. I still have two or three more sewing projects to finish up before the fall season kicks in and writing starts again in earnest.
Haunting from my handwritten Journal,
Cindy K.-K.
