Stories All Around Us

I've been a Bad Blogger. I haven't written a new post in 11 days, oh no! But I've been traveling, visiting, Thanksgivinging (I made that word up) and helping a loved one move. But the entire time I've been working on a new novel by Story Sparking. (I just made that phrase up, too, and writers will know what I mean.)

There are Sparks, or Story Ideas, Everywhere! Here are a few - based on real events - that I've tucked away in my brain for possible future use in a novel (all names and places to be changed to a fictitious version of course.)

• Driving a rental truck across several states and narrowly avoiding a several car pile-up in the fog. Or having the truck (with all your worldly possessions) break down on a narrow stretch of mountain pass (oh, and let's have a snow storm, shall we?) and waiting for hours until another truck becomes available, only to have to move everything from the old truck to the new one. But then you accidentally drop the cat carrier and the hinge breaks and the door springs open and out flies your cat . . .
• Arriving in your new location, and the movers you have lined up to help you unload boxes are the shiftiest looking people you have ever seen, and you are alone. Or wait, maybe it's the hunkiest, most handsome guy you've ever seen and he questions you about your life, and you tell him, but finally you are alone in a new apartment in a new town, a new state, with everything that constitutes your entire life stacked in boxes around you and it's just too much, too much - and you begin to sob but you can't find any Kleenex, or toilet paper, and your cat begins to howl because it wants out of the cage which is now wired shut, and the neighbor opens his door to greet you, and . . .
• Okay, I ran a little long on that last one. How about you are in the airport flying (home after Thanksgiving, moving, starting a new job, whatever) and you meet a young man waiting at the gate with you, for the same flight, and he confides that he's just ridden the bus three days from Alabama, and now he's flying to the Northwest for a job and it's the first time he's ever flown on an airplane, and he's a little nervous. So you comfort him, and ask about his life, and he tells you he's making a new start, a better life for his daughters. How old? you ask. They're six, he relates. Oh, twins? you ask (a natural question.) Nah, he says, flashing white teeth in a huge grin, and you really, really want to ask more, but decide to leave it at that.

See what I mean? Stories all around us.

Now must begin Writing . . .