I’m jumping into NaNoWriMo this month. What’s that? Well, “Each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with a first draft.” I know I won’t get my first draft done, but I might make some progress on a novel I started working on for a long time. By “working on” I mean not writing anything since the autumn of 2017 when I took my Waldorf first grade. But I think about it on the regular. Does that count?
Anyone else out there joining in?
This story is the one that made me realize that I loved writing stories. When I was in school, my dear teachers told me, “April, you can’t write.” Well, turns out, I can’t SPELL because I’m super dyslexic. Being able to spell and being able to write are definitely two different skills, dear teachers. I didn’t really start writing songs or stories until I was 40 because I didn’t know I could do it. Late bloomer. So late.
How I got the idea for this novel
I was away performing my original show “The Butterfly Adventurer - a Story Full of Songs” (the precursor to the Thom Gnome stories) at the Maryland Fairy Festival. I’d been mulling over a story idea about two fairy sisters. I had another story idea that was a lot more like Ramona the Brave except about a boy - Charlie Shabeau.
While I was staying in Baltimore, I had a dream that the fairies and this goofy boy were friends. I woke up wondering how they could have met - they live in two different worlds. How strange! I went to the coffee shop and started working it out for myself.
If you like the Two Sisters and the Wolf, well, the two fairy sisters became Sar and Neiva. And all I can say is, the wolf is far more than it seems in my podcast stories.
In this scene, Sar and Charlie are seeing each other for the first time. Sar has just rescued Charlie from the river. Unfortunately, they are captured and hung upside down by…
Charlie was face to face with the strangest face he'd ever seen upside down or right side up. If you could call it a face. I guess you could. Five eyes were squashed into a triangular pile on top of three lizard-like nose slits. Sharp shark-like teeth, it seemed like hundreds of them, all smashed into a thin wide mouth than ran all the way from one side to the other over a rutted face. Charlie blinked.
Standing before him, breathing dirt breath down Charlie's nose and slobbering bits of spittle on his cheek, was what looked like a stubby, dirt-colored, fur-skinned, many-eyed turd standing on top of short, spindly legs. Maybe three feet tall. Behind this looks-like-a-turd was his whole looks-like-a-turd family. Or more like a looks-like-a-turd community. A whole lot more looks-like-a-turds than Charlie would have guessed before opening his eyes, were standing around admiring their prey in the sun-dappled, musky half-darkness of a small forest glen.
Charlie wanted to shut his eyes again, to pretend that this was not happening, but he couldn't let go of trying to understand what in the world he was actually seeing. Being upside down didn't help.
The blood rushing through the top of his head was getting louder. Throom, throom, throom. Charlie was still swinging a little from being spun by the turds. His crunchy, chestnut eyes took in the angel hanging from her legs in a branch right next to his. Her ringlets hung almost to the ground, making a puddle of mud. Was her hair still wet from rescuing him? Had that really happened?
Charlie'd been a nice person, hadn't he? That angel was supposed to be floating on air, leading him across a sun-split cloud of joy, while a choir of angels sang Charlie his heavenly welcome song. But nope, here he was, meat for a looks-like-a-turd celebration. There's not even a heavenly harp, he thought.
The angel let out a barely perceptible, not very angelic, growl. If Charlie hadn't been looking right at her, he wouldn't even have heard it. But her growl was answered immediately by a choir alright, and it wasn’t angels. A chorus of howls, and they sounded close. The five-eyed, looks-like-a-turds stopped licking their chops over the crunchiness of Charlie's eyeballs and started peering into the surrounding woods, fear streaming out of ever one of their eyes.
“Couldn't be wolves?” came worried whispers.
The howling sounded closer, coming from everywhere.
“Wolves!”
A wave of terror ran through the turds. In a heartbeat, they dropped their poking sticks and disappeared into the earth. Charlie saw hatches covering holes he hadn't noticed before, and in a flash, his hostile-turd nightmare became but a gentle clearing in a tranquil woods. Nothing and no one there but him and an upside-down angel.
And wolves. A whole pack of them came sauntering into the clearing, yellow eyes on Charlie.
Hope you saw the fun things I’ve posted recently on TikTok and Instagram.
Alright, I’m a teacher. It’s been a crazy Halloween time. I’m going to bed. Love you.