Author Archive

“From every length
In spite of gravity
I myself am
Transformed.
Designed,
Step-by-step,
A preposterous verdue
Beneath coarser grass.
Conspicuous.
Unrecumbent.
Patient from broad, keen storms.
Cheerful.
From morn now creeps ivory.”

Unrecumbent is the title of a painting that I am currently working on. The poem above appears as a bit of found fiction down the right side of the painting. Copyright 2010 Ana Maria Seaton.

This is an entry for Writer’s Digest Magazine’s September Big 10 issue Your Story prompt contest. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

   It’s odd how fate intervenes.
   I guess I was meant to help her. I’d seen her, not 24 hours ago at the filling station just inside city limits. Bright blue dress blowing in the breeze, those legs, how could you not. She was on the payphone crying, desperate sounds in her voice. Stuff like that just tugs at your strings, you know? I started to head to my car, well, not my car. Samantha insisted on troubling a guy two counties over to match some cheap lipstick she’d found in a dollar store. Deep pink, couldn’t even wear the stuff because it broke her out, but she had to have the color. Hope she likes it, that’s a LOT of pink…

photo copyright 2010 writer's digest

   Anyway, I’d seen this girl, all blue dress and legs and long hair. She’d not had a good time of it from the looks of things so I turned and started to walk over and see what’s up. Listen a sec, see if I could help, so I leaned over and made like I was looking at the front page in the newspaper bin. Then she turns. Pregnant. Man, that couldn’t be good with the bits of anger I was hearing on the other end. Her eyes caught me though, clear as the old blue glass bottles Sam liked to collect in our kitchen window at home. Almost lost my balance.
   She turns again, embarrassed, and I stood up. Best to just leave that one alone I thought, not my problem and besides, she’s got someone she can talk to even if they don’t get along. In my experience, the one’s you fight with the hardest are the ones who love you the most. Probably her dad or something.
   I climb in the car and call Sam. She can tell I’m tired and I’m getting “Don’t you get a scratch on that car John McMurthy.” So, despite wanting to drive straight through, I pull in for the night.
   Next morning I got up to the sun shining in my eyes and I went down to the diner for breakfast. Seeing the menu I start thinking Sam was pretty smart, better food than I’d get from the filling station. I eat, pay my bill, and head back out for home.    Everything was fine for about 37 miles then, wouldn’t you know it, the Lipstick Limousine sputters and dies. Shit.
   Get out. Pop the hood. No clue, nothing I can see, so I start to slam the hood then think better of it. (the couch isn’t that comfortable) I close her back up and grab the cell out of the car when I notice her. Had she been there all this time? Damn I need my eyes checked.
   Blue dress is standing not 15 feet away, bag in her hand, staring off across the road. I can still see the tear tracks down her cheeks in the sunlight. She doesn’t move, just keeps staring, so I look over and there’s a small house in the distance across a field of browning green pasture. White sheets are blowing in the wind on the line at the side of the house. There’s a dog chasing a little boy around a woman hanging stuff on the line. Must be his grandmother, white hair and apron, regular Aunt Bea. I look back at Blue and she hasn’t moved.
   I sit on the hood, pulling the hook for my keys and tucking it in my pocket before sitting again (I’ll buff it, she won’t know), and I call Sam.
   “Gonna be late, babe.”
   I spend a couple minutes calming Sam down, assuring her it just overheated and I’d take it in to Charlie on my way back through town just to make sure as soon. Should make it for dinner, though I might be a little late, but her Pink Parade Float (I didn’t say that, not that stupid) would be fine. I was going to have to call her back if it didn’t start up again, but she didn’t need to worry just yet. Besides, I wanted to see what this Blue thing was all about.
   Cell phone in my pocket, I sat there a minute. She just kept staring. No tears, just a frozen look, her eyes on that house. I cleared my throat a couple times then was about to get up when she finally moved. She walked across the road and up to the barbed wire that surrounded the pasture. I was about to say something but she was already half through, sliding carefully in between. No clue how she did it with that belly. She took a couple steps and turned toward me finally, smiling. She kinda laughed, half amusement at the look on my face probably, but there was something bittersweet about it at the end. Her face went blank again and she turned to make the long stretch of pasture toward the house.
   I watched her go, she didn’t turn around again, and I wondered what her story was. There were a few things I could come up with, but I’d never really know and that made me sad. Whatever it was, it was obvious she just needed some courage. Maybe she was going home.
   I got back in and tried the engine again. Started right up like nothing happened.
   “Fickle thing, probably mad about the color she painted you huh?” I had to laugh at that.
   I made it home, just in time for dinner, and relayed my day to Sam while we ate. Sam had gone all out so I was glad I hadn’t missed it.
   “So did she say anything?”
   “Nope, didn’t ask.” Sam had started to give me a disapproving look. “I was going to but she just started walking. I’d have helped if I could, you know that.”
   “I know…” Sam stared down at her a plate a moment.
   “But?” I knew that contemplative look of hers.
   “What did you say she was wearing?”
   “A blue dress, really bright, one of those sundresses like you wear, blue suitcase. Why?”
   Sam set her fork down, sweet potato half eaten and getting cold. She walked over to the kitchen counter and flipped through a newspaper sitting there, crossword puzzle long finished. She stood over it, reading under her breath and shaking her head. “John…”    I went to her, she was shaking.
   “Oh, that poor thing…” She turned her head into my shoulder and cried as I read.

MORE SIGHTINGS OF THE BLUE LADY
Fairmount, IN (May 1, 2009) – It has become an almost annual celebration as the woman in blue makes her return to Grant County.
Jessica Corbet, lost at age 23 while giving birth to her son in 2001, was seen along County Road 15 yesterday afternoon. Corbet was survived by her mother, Fairmount resident Alice Fagan, and her now past father, Carl Fagan. Carl Fagan committed suicide after his daughter passed. The family at the time refusing comment, though, it has since come to light that Corbet and her father had a fight shortly before her death. What it was in regard to the family has declined comment. Unbeknownst to her family, Corbet had married in secret two months earlier. Corbet’s husband, Jackson Earl Corbet, was reported missing in action in Dubai two weeks prior to her return home on the 1st of May, 2001. Phillip Corbet, Jessica’s son now age 8, was adopted by his grandmother in October of the same year.
At the request of the Fagan/Corbet family, reporters are asked not to solicit them out of respect for the family.

   I’m not sure if Sam was still shaking, or if it was me, but this was definitely not something I was prepared for. I just stood there and let it sink in. In the end, I was glad her son was well but…I can’t imagine what it must be like. Always coming home, never being able to hold him. I closed my eyes and held Sam a little tighter. Sam had made a special dinner that night to tell me we were pregnant.
   It’s odd how fate intervenes. Looking back, I know now that I was meant to see Jessica Corbet. She reminded me how important life was and that it was the little kindnesses that make the difference.

     Herman Bistecky was a quiet man, very much like his mother. Most felt it was because his father was anything but, so much so that they had to make up for his loud behavior by being demure. His father, Brunner, was a philanderer as much as he was a philanthropist and had a photographic eye that could charm even the Greek goddesses into posing for him. He made good money, though, that allowed his wife to live without a care so she put up with his wandering ways. Brunner, getting up in years, often drank to excess and his mind was not as well honed as it once was. In fact, he would often forget who his own son was and make Herman pose in the oddest outfits. Herman loved his father, though, so he would oblige him and looked on each encounter as an adventure.
     What will he have me be today I wonder, visions of embroidered fabrics and soft, exotic linens running through his mind. Though he loved to read, he often found that he did not need to as he could live out most of his adventures in his father’s studio with his vast array of costumes and props. He had been an Indian, a cruise ship captain, a pirate, a sheik, even the back end of a camel once. Though, admittedly, his father’s antics that day had gotten a little out of hand as the front end of the camel was, in fact, an elephant.
     Today, Herman would not be going on an adventure though. His father still completely smashed from his evening out the night before, Brunner sat quietly staring at his stage, already set. A chair, an ornately carved table, a book and what appeared to be the plumage from a dead ostrich sat in the middle of the room.
     “Father?”
     “Put it on.” Bruner looked up, his eyes still glazed over, smiling wryly as the madness seeped into his eyes. Herman hesitated. “You heard me Cecile. Shut up and put it on.”
     Herman walked over to the chair and picked up what he realized to be a very fanciful hat, possibly from an ostrich, and looked back at his father before letting out a long sigh. Lighting a cigarette, Herman stood calmly between the chair and table, hand resting on the book atop it, appropriately a bible, and silently plotted to kill his father.
     The final straw? His mother’s name was Eunice.

———
Reprinted with permission from it’s original post.
All content is copyright 2010 Ana Maria Seaton. Duplication in whole or in part by digital or non-digital means is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

     She lay sleeping, her hair the color of fire lost in a sea of orange chiffon. The day’s events had been exhausting, her emotions overwhelmed. He sat quietly, watching her, her breathing so soft that he would occasionally shift his visage from her face down her form, checking for the gentle rise and fall of her chest. She was lovely, inside and out, too lovely to have had to deal with her father’s indiscretion and the subsequent chaos that followed. In truth, he was glad that he was dead.
     It was always known that Raphael held no love for Olivette’s father. Growing up side by side, his mother being her family’s cook, he watched as Olivette’s childhood had been obscured by the demon of a man that, as far as he was concerned, had infected her mother.
     At first she had vied for his attentions, fatherly affections that she had every right to, but the futility of reaching out to him made her quiet and withdrawn; something that Raphael had determined long ago to do his best to counter. Her father was the type of monster, not even a man in Raphael’s mind, who preferred treating his wife no better than the broken horse that plowed their fields. Rather than inconvenience himself to show Olivette affection, his own flesh and blood, he would refer to Olivette as “the child” or, in one instance, as part of his “litter” with enough disdain in his voice as though she were a common dog you would throw scraps to in an alley.
     The look that washed over her still burned at Raphael’s heart; he would never forget the pain in her eyes or the sounds of her sobbing into his chest as he held her tight.
     In truth, he was glad that he was dead. He would serve her better as her silent guardian, watching over her as he did now.

———
Reprinted with permission from it’s original post.
All content is copyright 2010 Ana Maria Seaton. Duplication in whole or in part by digital or non-digital means is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

January’s meeting launched our first collaborative word list of the year with 35 words. This year I am upping the bar for our members. Once a month we will generate a collaborative word list and I am asking for final drafts of their stories in time for our next month’s meeting, in this case February 27th. Holding myself to task as well, I have been working on my story on and off, catching moments where I can.

Our meeting was on the 16th so, words fresh in my mind, I began writing the next day. I find, lately, that I am most prolific working in an inexpensive, spiral-bound quadrille notebook. My word list is on another piece of paper that I have tucked into the notebook for easy reference. Out of the 35 words, I have used all but 19 of the words so far and have hand-written about 28 lines on one page. Aside from that, for some reason, I started making dialogue notes on the back of the back of the word list itself.

Trying to use the word list is the most fun I think. It pushes me to expand my vocabulary; some months further than others as we are always trying to mess with each other and throw in a ringer or two. Using the words, finding creative ways to either change their meaning, or making myself find a way to use the word in the tense it was provided, knocks me out of my comfort zone which is good.

Writing, like life, is a constant learning process. Approaching things from new angles and forcing yourself to find new ideas is a real challenge but it keeps your writing fresh and entertaining.

Where are you at in your final draft? Leave a comment below and let us know how it is going!

Working a lot – I am freelance so it is a good thing – so I have been off stage left for a while now. As far as my personal endeavors, I have been writing on my main novel on and off; l have two going currently. I am up over 130,000 words and not hit the editorial phase yet. Thinking it may well turn into a trilogy or at least two books. Those that have read it, friend and stranger alike, have said it would make a great screenplay for a movie; which keeps me going, I love hearing that.

I run a writer’s group here locally and online, Word Whimsy, and we just launched our writer’s group zine, Three Dollar Squirrel. We are accepting submissions for Issue 2 if any of you would like to participate. I post one question each month on the writing process and it publishes on the 1st of the next month. We have several well-known authors including Patricia Telesco so I am thrilled with the response we have been getting. I’ve gotten several new participants just since the first issue came out last week.

My group is having meetings every two weeks now for the anthology we are putting together. It has been good motivation for me to finish some past stories and start new ones. We have been reading each other’s work aloud, making feedback notes, and discussing story flow and continuity. It has worked really well and we are all looking forward to our next meeting. The local group is holding closed meetings at my house but the online portion of the group is still open to anyone. The anthology is going to be fabulous by what I have seen so far of everyone’s work. I am really proud of them.

Speaking of which, time to hit the storyboarding…

Well, I am awake. I don’t want to be but I am. My pillow stills beckoning, the glow of the laptop casting ethereal blue shadows across the headboard, Val still mostly asleep, tolerant at my side. It is the morning of NaNoWriMo and the beginning of my decent down the rabbit hole.

This year for NaNo, I have set a hefty goal for myself: Complete two (2) books in one (1) month. Yes, you read that right. Yes, I know, I’m a lunatic.

I have two novels, one that has been eating my brain since last year, and one that is on backburner, rearing it’s horror/thriller genre head occasionally for the stray idea and notation.

Looking forward to our Thursday night Word Whimsy meetings.

For those doing the actual, official NaNo meetings from 9am-12noon on Saturdays we are not going to make it today. We have friends coming over, homework, and housework that got neglected this week due to prepping my new breast cancer cards for a charity function…yes, I will post them on Etsy this weekend. hehe I have several canvases to lay out for show entries and donations this weekend as well. We also have more pumpkins to carve, seeds to roast, and sites to design so I am percolating ideas in between and writing my 2,000+ words today…

I have had a few people ask if we were doing our 1pm meetings every Saturday vs once a month for NaNo-sake and I have no problem hooking up with people outside the schedule we set up. You can reach me at renmeleon@gmail.com anytime so let me know! I’ll also post when Laurel (Petalouda) and I get-together for anyone who would like to crash our meetings. hehe

No matter what you are doing today, I wish you all a very productive NaNo and great success in your personal goals, whether new projects or old as I know a lot of us are writing new content on current projects. I hope your days are full of wordy goodness and that your nights are full of dreamy novel-inducing slumber. May your pen never run dry, nor your laptop battery expire.

Pixelated words percolating in my head…

It is rare that I get to bed before 1am, but I have probably been that way most of my life. I am a complete night owl and when most people are deep in REM I am wide awake, sitting up in bed (if I am not still at the computer) and either reading, making notes, doing word puzzles, or working on my stories. There are nights when we have had a long day and I really am tired; those are the nights when I wake the next morning to read really bizarre notes in the middle of my pages, sentences that look like a monkey came in through the window and sprawled nonsensical phrases mid-sentence. It is those little things I cherish because they make me laugh and sometime spin off ideas like my brain was still trying to make sense of SOMETHING before it passed out altogether. It also means I need to go to bed earlier.

My writing this week consists of  working on the contract for Gumtree, writing guidelines for two charity “journal” projects and a Corvid Crow Call that I will be posting by the weekend, as well as completing two stories for my writer’s group.

The writer’s group is really blossoming and I look forward to each month’s meeting, we all do. It is nice to see old friends, make new ones, and play with the collaborative word list. We have found a happy medium with it and aren’t as bad about throwing in uber words to stump each other. O_o One of my favorites is still “geosynchronous”. :::shakes her head::: Logan is still paying for that one. I got that one out of the way first sentence! I actually thanked him for it though because it gave me a good story idea. The collaborative word lists have been great for pushing our vocabulary and comfort zones. Ysa has even been contributing words and we’ve made it a game. She always impresses me with it because the words are pretty big for a seven year old…splendid, repulsive, communication…think we’ve struck on a good homeschooling exercise. hehe

We have NaNoWriMo coming next so we are gearing up for that right now. Our Kickoff event is a costume party so it should be fun and it is an excuse to eat candy. :::Cheshire cat grin::: Laurel and I are going to be seeing a lot of each other in November since we will be adding NaNo support meetings to our week on top of our regular “write night”. She and I have been meeting once a week for a while now and we really look forward to it. We camp at the local Starbucks and plan, write, conspire. It keeps us motivated with our writing as well as my other projects.

Speaking of motivation to get things done…

We had our writer’s meeting on Saturday and it was like old home week. An old friend, someone Laurel and I used to LARP with, came to the meeting with her. We also had a couple of members who had not been able to make the last couple of meetings show up so it was nice to see them.

So what does this mean? We got absolutely nothing done but had a wonderful time.

The word lists seems to be taming out now, people aren’t as bent on messing with other people (read as bent meaning we still do it). The collaborative word list is a fabulous way to push your vocabulary though and is a good jumping off point for story building. For your story’s final draft you can throw the word list out the window completely if you want, it has done its job which was to shove you out of your comfort zone and make you think.

Next meeting is October 11th if you are local. We will be discussing our NaNoWriMo plan of attack for November for those who plan to participate!

Resurrecting this blog into a new form, hence the really cool theme by Roam2Rome. Thank you! Laurel, my partner in crime over at Word Whimsy, and I have been both working hard to clear our plates so we can focus on projects that are more dear to us. The writer’s group meets once a month but she and I sneak off from our regular happy lives once a week to have some “muse time”. Heavily caffeinated, our sweet tooth temporarily satiated, we camp at Starbucks for five to six hours pouring over current projects, completing stories, and brainstorming new ideas.

This past week has been about finding the name for her blog and setting it up. Laurel has recently made the decision to write full-time and I admire her for that. She has always been pretty clear about what she wants in life and she is a constant source of inspiration for me. One of the other things she wants to do is help me with my projects, like Art for Cures and the rubber stamp company, so I am REALLY looking forward to having my long-awaited, and much needed, assistant. Can I get a WOOT!

So the first visible sign of the new decade of getting things DONE is to come full circle here. Beyond Sleep & Dreams is of the BWO philosophy so there will be no apologies for not posting daily but I will be making subscribing worthwhile so stay tuned!