There's no internet at The Clearing so I was unable to post while I was there. I didn't miss it. I didn't miss the whirlwind of things needing to be done to settle Mom's estate. I didn't miss the phone ringing and the piles of things needing to be sorted. For four days I thought only of myself. I wrote when I wanted to. I took a walk when I needed too. I overate. I laughed at silly remarks that Cookie or Skully made. I knitted a bit. I stared off into space. It was restful and oh so necessary. I'm excited that Celia who arrived in the September 25th prompt has proved to be the catalyst that ties together a story idea that's been scratching at me for about 3 years. I had all these characters and the settings, a detecdtive and a villian, a retired British spy and his wife, a fisherman and a Rastafarian, even a murder but I could never figure out a way to butt them togehrer to make a story. Celia is the thread that ties them all together. With Celia in the picture they all make sense. Whew.
November 6--Celia Stevens is a white female aged 48 with brown eyes and fine dark brown hair that she wears cut short for convenience. She has pale skin and sunburns easily even though she loves to spend a lot of time outdoors. She walks a few miles a day year round, bikes, and gardens. She wears sunscreen and broad brimmed hats to protect her skin but can’t bring herself to give up wearing shorts and tank tops in the summer. Her style is casual, wearing khakis, shorts, and white tee shirts; for work she wears “good” jeans and sweaters in winter and cotton shirts in summer. She’s usually in tennis shoes or tennis like shoes for comfort, not really interested in stylish shoes. When she’s nervous she clasps her hands together, what Ann calls “flap hands.” Celia is friendly, has never met a stranger, exhibits a dry and sharp sense of humor, is insightful about people and their motives, and is a good judge of character. She grew up in an averagely happy middle class family in Middle America and still lives in the same Wisconsin town she grew up in. She was a fat kid and teen but is now just a bit overweight at five feet five inches tall and weighs one hundred sixty five pounds. Despite her outgoing manner Celia is unsure of herself in new situations and thinks people only tolerate her. Even though she has had many examples of having insight into people she doesn’t really trust her gut. If she doesn’t stop and think too much, she’s fine but if she takes time to consider she hesitates and can lose an opportunity to meet someone she would like or have a job opportunity she should not pass up. She has recently lost her job due to the sagging economy and her fiancé left her for a younger slimmer woman. She had booked and paid for this scuba diving trip to Bonaire more than a year ago so has come because it’s cheaper to take it than lose it and pay change fees. She has rented an efficiency apartment with an included Honda pickup truck and prepaid a dive package with both escorted boat dives and unlimited shore dives. Since she’s a single she does mostly boat dives. On one of them she spies something shiny wedged in the reef at around one hundred feet and can not resist swimming down to see what it is. The dive master sees her and waves her back up to join the group. She manages to slip the gold object into her buoyancy jacket’s pocket and rejoins the other divers. On board the dive boat she meets Jack and Mona an unmarried couple and they hit it off. Jack’s a wealthy man from Indiana who owned a chain of dry cleaners; Mona is his mistress who he is getting tired of. Mona and Celia become fast friends. Somehow bad men (Manning?) find out that Celia found gold and are after it. She eludes them a few times and arranges to leave the island but an oncoming storm grounds all the flights and she is forced to remain. She has no one to rely on since the bad man is also leading Jack on a merry chase trying to con him out of a big chunk of his wealth.
There you have a taste of me talking to myself on the computer, or the Alphasmart working my way through the story and weaving the new into the old. I'm very excited about it.
--Barbara
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