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Wednesday, 12 November 2014

The Plan?

Today I am working on The Plan. It's turning out to be quite a tale and as usual there are elements contained within it that I never envisaged from the start.

It originated from a short story I wrote some years ago and may yet have a change in title before I am done but essentially its about a woman and her struggle to re-establish a life for herself after the demise of her marriage.

Here is a little excerpt where the main character ,Suzie, is forced to tell her children that their dad has just become engaged to someone else :-


“Well I wondered how you felt about it?” Forrest admitted, refusing to meet her eyes. “I mean he was your husband first.”
Yes and of course technically he still was, although she omitted to give them that piece of information. How did she feel? Betrayed? Relieved? Sad? Like one door had closed but another had opened?
To avoid the question for a moment she fetched a large bag of popcorn and tipped it into a bowl. Watching the bowl fill up she knew suddenly how she could explain herself.
“You see all this popcorn?” she placed the bowl on the table. “it all looks alike, doesn’t it?” she picked out two individual pieces. “But in fact every single bit is different to every other bit, the way it pops, the angles and particular shape it makes…so that finding two bits that can fit together is really hard. Sometimes you can jam them together and the salt grains or toffee will make them stick and other times it won't.”
She watched Ellie select two bits and push them together.
“Well people are like that too. Sometimes they can stick together and sometimes they can’t. Your dad and I just were the type that couldn’t…” something caught her eye and she dipped her hand into the bowl, plucking it out and curling her fist around it.
“And then sometimes - if you are really lucky  - you find this,” she uncurled her fingers to reveal two kernels of corn which had somehow in the popping process fused together.
 
I hope to be posting some exciting news soon.
 
Until then - Happy Reading!

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