Hey-o!  1,097 words, even with an editing day in there.  Yeah for me!

Things I’ve learned today:

There is a place on my street when I’m out strolling about that ideas come to me.  The exact same spot on the sidewalk was also birth to a recent sonnet “Crabapple” seen here:

Crabapple – Oct.18.09

Began when the frost came as bristle brush

and ended with Chinooks from the south- west.

Little apples turned deep red.  Forget blush,

recall death.  Hanging by habit but dressed

for October’s end, they are masks of their

former selves: lush, supple.  Begging began

pick me first though pious leaves wilt in prayer

for the saving of the dear fruit’s pagan

souls.  One by one, they silently succumb

to winds of change, of seasonal same.  Drop

and plop to the frozen walk, they become

crow feed, squirrel juice, autumn road-kill.  Full stop

Em, on our walk, observes apple’s belly.

“Gross,” she says, “It’s icky sidewalk jelly.”

Why am I out walking in the dark at 7 p.m. (cry, it’s always dark now) in minus 22 degree Celsius weather?

Well, another something that is not new but may be new to you: exercise stimulates my creative cortex muscle.  So I was coming back from the gym and kapow, there were tonight’s 300+ words.  Recasting will have to fit them back into the story somehow…. But the beauty of dialogue, especially children’s dialogue, they seem to interrupt at any old time.  Especially when most inconvenient.

So, I recommend you read Chapter 1 tonight – the ‘chinky’ section.  I hope you laugh.  It got me smiling at what kids will say (or a writer’s sub-conscious).

On a politically correct note: I adore Asian people and culture and would never call them chinky.  Never.  What the characters say is their own business.  Sue them.