I let this blog slide for a few months while my pinkie stopped being numb. It's still numb, but the malady has spread to areas above the neckline.
Summer has slithered past, promising one thing, delivering it without comment and preparing to step aside for autumn.
Autumn is an especially nice time to be a writer, or even a person who sees the world through what might be a writer's eyes. The days are shorter, the shadows longer, and the breeze threatens to become a howling wind right about the time we decide to carve triangles into the front of an orange squash.
Turning it and its habitat into an eerie corral of creatures.
That's the problem with the whole story. It's always the same creatures. People only know the creatures they've experienced and most of them are dreadfully uninteresting.
The ones that matter are inside the mind. Scary stuff, that.
For the moment, the scratching, growling, snarling thing on the other side of the tree is content. In another couple of months, it will emerge, turning autumn into a graveyard of fear and anxiety.
That should be fun. And the mums will be in full bloom.
I had the opportunity to take part in an essay contest that described life for a solitary person on a deserted island, filled with horror. I didn't win. I wanted to win. Honestly, I don't know how a deserted island could contain any horror that didn't contribute to it being deserted in the first place. But anyway, I decided to show up there and get the scoop.
There is a germ of a story emerging. Let me think it over and get back to you.
