THANKS FOR THE INSPIRATION, GRANDMA!
Posted on March 4, 2019
It's always nice when you're closing out a project and your next one conjures itself up almost whole cloth.
This week, I'm working on the last 10,000 words of The God Wheel and boy is it drawing to a close with a very intense bang. I had secretly worried it would conclude with an intense whimper, but my brain reworked a very strong and linear ending to the last seven chapters this past weekend. Armed with this much pluckier ending, I'm crushing the chapters this week.
Still, when I had time to think – like at the dentist office awaiting my son's emergence with his cavity filled – my grey matter couldn't help but wander.
And the source where it wandered from was my grandmother's backyard.
See, my grandmother had a cool feature of her yard. At the very end of her property, there was a run, what most would call a very narrow creek. It usually only ever managed two feet in terms of depth, but we spent many a visit racing leaf boats, twigs, and – in later years when our origami skills rose to paper boat status – an actual vehicle that stayed relatively buoyant.
We ventured downstream a great deal, but hardly ever upstream, mostly because the terrain got too woodsy and our parents would've had a cow if we'd dared that more demanding trek.
From time to time, the creek would flood, spilling into my grandmother's yard. In those instances, it ran swifter and deeper. We were never allowed to visit it on those precarious occasions. It even reached as high as my grandmother's earthen-floored, and creepy basement at times.
So I was reminiscing about this water feature, and a story idea came to me.
What if the creek brought magic along in its currents? What if when it ran slow and shallow, it brought good magic and mystical creatures with kind hearts? And what if when it grew swollen, ran fast, and spilled over its banks, dark magic could emerge into the world from its greater depths?
I pictured a boy playing with a gentle naiad, one that had lily pads for hair and could hide in any water, with no puddle being too small for her essence.
I also knew my desire to write a story featuring a talking fox had to finally come to fruition. So, I added a talking fox to the mix.
The grandmother would have a connection to the magic in the river. She would spout blessings and warnings about the creek and its denizens.
It appealed to me to tell a story where such wildly different generations might team-up to face evil. The brave grandmother facing down a world of magical evil hurt to aid her grandson didn't come from my real life. My own grandmother wasn't aggressive in anything but the amount of Aqua Net she employed to hold her hair into its nest-hard configuration.
Just the same, this story wouldn't have settled into my head without my many visits to my grandmother's house and her magical creek, Arcana Creek.
I plan to work on this during my May track-out. My hope is I can release it as three smaller novellas. More details once I get this new project underway.