I Heart Yellow Houses

This is a little frame house I found in Plano, Tx. Next time I'm over there I'm going back to get a better picture of the detail on the mosaic.

When I write I like to have visual references. The characters in the stories I write need to live somewhere.

Houses inspire me to write worthy characters.

NaNoWriMo ... Novel excerpt from 2004

Our mother, an avid reader, and even more so while pregnant, named me while she read Shakespeare’s, A Midsummer’s Night Dream. I am Helena, or Lena, for short. We always shorten up our names before we started school, I went through a period of time, most of 4^th and all 5^th grade, answering only to Helena, usually waiting till whoever was calling me to say it twice. She was reading The Ambassadors, by Henry James, so that is how Chadwick got his name. And by the time mother was carrying Bart, her literary choices were quite different, with Chad and I, 2 and 4 years old respectively. He got his literally name from Dr Suess’s Bartholomew and the Oobleck. And Bart was supposed to be the end of this line of Carmichaels.

We weren’t sure what name mother would choose for the last wee one she carried. We all called this one the gift baby because we overheard mother muttering “the gift baby” several times a day. By this time her reading material was almost nonexistent, but she sure managed to eat a lot of rocky road ice cream, a half gallon would arrive by way of the mail boat every day for months. Plus, mother always had an orange, frothy concoction in a clear, cut crystal goblet, that she called “my mimosa”, but I knew there wasn’t any champagne in it. Mom was strictly a teatotaler, hot, cold, and many flavors, until at 40 she found herself gifted with another pregnancy. Then she carried the goblet and pitcher or thermos filled with the mimosa mixture with her everywhere. Chad and I were betting on Rocky, whether the gift baby was a boy or girl.. Bart was positive it would be Mimi, if a girl was born. I don’t think there was a literary reason for the name Meg, but at least she didn’t have to shorten her name.

I have not done a word count on my 2007 NaNoWriMo this week. I'll wait until tomorrow night.

The excerpt I shared is from a trilogy that began with my first NaNoWriMo attempt in 2004. I still work on the first and second one. The first is pretty much complete. Second one, started in 2005, I'm still editing. Third one was for NaNoWriMo 2006 and only has about 4000 words, but I do have a great outline and know the characters fairly well.

This year's "novel" has been fun, whether I make 50K words or not! Totally different, a romantic fantasy would best describe the genre. A Pirate is involved! Gotta Love Pirates!

When I sell the farm I will write, paint, create...