Traveling shovel of death

      Nanowrimo has this tradition of the traveling shovel of death.  The idea, if I understand it correctly, is to be used when your plot gets stuck or stale.  You can spice it up by killing someone with a shovel.  It has to be a shovel and the person has to die. 

                Well, since my novel is already complete, I will just use the prompt for a short story, and if the shovel travels, why not have it travel under its own volition.

                The force pushed Jeb to the ground with such strength; he didn't know what happened before he had the taste of horse manure in his mouth and the smell up his nose. 

                He was angry, pushing himself onto his arms, he was going let that person have it, and he was going to teach them, that he was not a man to be messed with.  Quickly turning himself over he looked up and screamed, a loud primal, frightened scream.  A scream that sent the chickens flying and brought the dogs running. 

                "You are a myth, you aren't real, I don't believe in you" he screamed.

                Closing his eyes the last thing Jeb saw was a hovering shovel, swinging itself down with such force and so furiously, his feeble attempts to crawl away were denied. 

                Walking into the barn Bruce looked down and smiled, then turning around he left through the same door.

                Within moments, the barn was crowded with farmhands, someone was yelling for the police to be called, others were speculating on what happened.  Bruce was right there amongst the rest, playing his part as well as he had the past year.

                "It's the shovel I tell ya, the shovel got him" a man’s voice broke through the chaos.

                "Ah, c'mon that is a myth, nobody is going to believe that" another voice came.

                Bruce agreed at all the right moments and showed disbelief with it was necessary.  How should he know, he said, it's all a guess, he agreed, no, there can't possibly be a serial killer on the farm, he conceded.

                The officials arrived and looked at the body, there was blunt force damage to the front and the back of the skull.  The pattern of the struggle appears to show that there was only one person present, and yet, one can't bash oneself with a blunt object.   What made this even more of a mystery is that in the last 12 months, this was the 6th blunt force injury at this farm.  There were never any witnesses and there was never a sign of a struggle between 2 or more people.  The victim always appeared to be alone. 

                Later that evening the guys were talking, they were all strong men, and they were not easily frightened, and yet this, this had them all on edge.  Six murders in 12 months, there was no pattern, there were no clues as to why a victim would be targeted or what he had done to lead to the attack.    The farm hands decided that for the next several weeks, they should never be alone; working in pairs could save their lives. 

                Bruce didn't like this arrangement, though nobody seemed to care about what he wanted.  As the farm cook, he wasn't often included in the gatherings of the farm hands, they didn't invite him to the weekly poker nights, they weren't interested in having him follow along when they went into town, and they completely forgot about him when they made the decision to work in pairs.   What did they care if anything happened to him, in actually they just didn’t think about him at all. 

                For two long months, Bruce waited and bided his time.   Sooner or later they would get tired of being in pairs, someone would get careless and wonder off, and then he would be there, and he would enact his vengeance.   As he sat and waited he let his mind wonder to the time when it all began. 

                Walking through the pasture one afternoon, he had been rebuffed by a few of the farm hands.   .  He had invited them over for drinks, and the laughed at him.  He was new to the farm, the most recent hire, and yet he wasn’t a farm hand in the same way as them, he was the cook, and he wasn’t even the families cook, he cooked for all the hired help.  This somehow made him lower than them, in their eyes.  He felt hurt, but most of all he felt scorned.    As he was walking he cursed the men he had just left, with eyes filled with rage, he wasn’t watching his where he was going and he tripped and fell over something lying in the tall grass.   Taking a careful look, he saw that it was a shovel, the perfect garden spade he thought.  It was obvious to him; it had been laying the field for some time, so he decided to claim it for himself. 

                Walking back to the house, he considered how it could use it for his vegetable garden.  As he was thinking the Foreman saw him "Why you have found Ol' Darryl's spade" .

                "Whose spade" Bruce asked, he had been at the farm for only a few weeks, and had not met anyone named Darryl. 

                "He was a farm hand here years ago, but he was also the towns grave digger" the Formane explained.  "He disappeared years ago, and nobody has seen or heard from him since.  He was pretty old, so he just as likely went off to die.  He was a mean and nasty old goat, some say that shovel is possessed.  It was believed that when times of dying were slow, he would use his shovel to hurry the business up".

                Bruce looked at the spade "possessed?"

                Clapping Bruce on the back he said "Ah, but that's all nonsense of course, who ever heard of a possessed shovel, that killed people when it was bored".  

 Chuckling he walked off “It’s poker night, I don’t want to be late.”

                Bruce took the shovel into his room and looked it over.  It didn't look like anything special, it was just a shovel, and yet, could it be possessed?

                Within a week he had his answer.  After an argument with Larry, he went to his garden and began furiously digging up the dirt, and muttering to himself "Oh I'll get him, and when I do he will be sorry."  Much to Bruce's surprise, the shovel began to pull on him, he followed it's tug until they found Larry sitting behind the barn smoking and before Bruce knew what happened, it ripped itself out of his hands and began to hit Larry repeatedly, on its own. 

                It didn't take Bruce long before he learned how to control the shovel.  He would have to be careful, he couldn't get greedy and he couldn't be seen arguing with anyone, for fear the blame would to easily be turned to him.   He would bide his time, for a few weeks, or a couple months and then he would let his shovel loose when he found one of his enemies alone. 

                It had now been two months and the farm hands were never alone.  Bruce began to notice something strange about the shovel, he would twitch on its own, and it would leap and flutter, as if it was longing to strike. 

                One afternoon while walking behind the barn, he found the shovel hovering in his path.  He tried to walk around, he tried to move it out of his way, he tried to grab hold of it and control it, but the shovel was desperate it needed blood, it needed to strike.    Bruce turned to run and he began to scream, but before it could escape his lips he was face down in the horse manure.  He tried to scramble away, but it kept striking him.  Having completed its job, the shovel dug a deep hole and forced the body in.   

                Nobody knew what happened to Bruce, nobody much cared, but they also realized the murders had ended and that was good enough for them.   

                Four years passed and Gary, a newly hired farm hand was walking through a pasture, he was angry, "how dare they say that to me" he was saying out loud, when suddenly he tripped.  Falling to the ground he saw a shovel, a small garden spade it appeared.   As he was walking back to the farm someone said "Oh, you found Bruce's shovel"...

The Furry Thing - Writing prompt

I was looking for writing prompts, and today's prompt was to write about a presence in our house.  I decided to pick something that was in the house of my grandparents. 
   
    When we were kids, we would often visit my grandparents house.  They were my fathers parents, and we always called them by their surname, so it was Grandma and Grandpa Surname.  It was odd, in that so many people have funny and cute names for their grandparents, and ours was Grandma and Grandpa Surname.    We did the same with my moms parents, I guess if we were supposed to call them by the formal Grandma and Grandpa, then the surname would be necessary to tell them a part. 

    Whenever we visited my grandparents house, we would play in the pool, or the various rooms.  I don't remember a lot of toys, or kids activities, but in one of the guest rooms, they had this totally odd, fuzzy thing, that honestly, scared the crud out of my sister and I.  Sometimes we would just go in to look at it and be sort of freaked out, but we were also drawn to it, it was like we were trying to conquer our fear by looking at it.

    It was made out of shag carpet, and was some odd color, I don't even remember what it was for real, but I remember it as some dirty ugly yellow, or green, but for all I know it could have been dirty orange, or even  brown.    It had those eyes that followed you whenever you moved.  We would sit in the room, on the bed, and move our heads, we would walk around the room and keep our eyes on it.  It was always there, and it was always watching us. 

    We didn't often stay the night there, as we lived pretty close, but when we did, my sister and I would stay in that room, and on the shelf was that thing.  I don't exactly recall the specifics, but I do remember *wanting* to have it taken out of the room, or at the very least turned around.   I seem to recall, putting it in the hallway, but then I also seem to remember having to keep it there, as our grandparents didn't want us touching and moving their stuff. 

    I remember thinking, in the way that only very young children can think, that our grandparents put it there to watch us, so that they would know what we did when we were in the room, supposedly sleeping, or playing, or whatever.  Our grandparents were actually very nice to us, and we enjoyed our visits, but as a young kid, I remember them being stern as well.  It was likely a generational thing.  They were of course 500 years old, to a young 5yo. 

    My grandparents died when I was 9, and I don't know whatever happened to that thing.  I sometimes still see it and occasionally think about those times as a kid, looking at that thing. 

    It's weird the types of things that we hold on to, for years on end.  It's been 30 years now since I have last seen that, and yet in my dreams, I may see it sitting on the shelf in the room, watching us as we room, and waiting until we leave, so it can tell my grandparents what we were doing. 

Planning my Nano

    When I decided to write Nanowrimo, I wasn't sure what I would write about, until I heard a news report that fit into the "weird news" category and I just knew I had to write about it.   The news report told of a man who would walk around the city in a super hero costume, and he considered himself a crime fighter.   One day, he saw a group of people, and according to him, they were brawling.  He took it upon himself to stop the brawl, and ran over to them and began to spray them with Pepper Spray. 

    It was such a odd story and I seem to remember the phrase "Delusions of Grandeur" coming up by either the commentator or the news report.  

     I didn't think anything of it for a few days, and then it hit me, what if i developed a story around people who all have Delusions of Grandeur, and they all believed they were super heroes.  I would have a therapist as the main character, and she can go around evaluating, and helping these people.   To make the book even more interesting, I would have the super heroes "special powers" based on a secondary diagnosis.


    The basic plot of my book was set, and what was left was for me to prepare myself for the long month of writing 50K.    I first detailed my main character first, and then the supporting characters.  That part was fun, and as my family and I were on along drive, I worked on it, with the help of my husband. 

    Next, I used the DSM-TR to pick the diagnoses for the super heroes, then planned out the outline.

    The part I liked the best, was when I went through the book, to write out the basics of each diagnosis, so that I would have them as accurate as possible, and I then went through the various treatment options.

    Some of the diagnoses I chose were: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Schizotypal, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dissociative Fugue, and Depersonalization. 

    I finished up the book, with a small homage to the guy who gave me the idea.

    I really enjoyed planning the book, I think I actually like that part, even more then I did writing it, but then I really enjoyed writing it as well. 

    I will tell more about the writing of it next time. 

My leap into Nanowrimo

     I have known about Nanowrimo for several years now.  I have NEVER considered it, I am not a very creative writer and I have no original ideas, so I was sure there would be no way I could write a fifty thousand word novel.  About two months ago, in September I decided to give creative writing a try.  I have a regular yearning to do something creative, and generally it is crafting, but it's not always feasible, and well the monetary cost/benefit is not always very great.  So, I decided to look into creative writing because I thought that it was free to do, and then if I get no return, then I have nothing lost. 
    In mid October I began to see the inevitable mentions of Nanowrimo on Facebook and in various places, so I thought I would just play around their site, and see more about what they were about.  About the same day as I thought I would look around, I thought up a great idea, that would absolutely work for me.  I began to look at the Nano forums in earnest to see if perhaps this was something I could pull off. 
    I found a workbook that broke down the entire process of how to start a novel.  It is designed for high school kids, but I didn't mind at all.  I have never written anything like this, and the more basic the explanation the better for me.   
    I spent the rest of October getting everything ready.  I filled out character questionnaires and developed a fairly detailed outline.  I am pretty certain that there is no way I would have been able to write that book without an outline.  I just do not have the creative juices that would allow for me to flow through 50K worth of words, without some structure. 
    On November 1st, in the morning I began to write, and I continued to write everyday since.
    I will write more about Nanowrimo and my specific book in later entries.   I wanted to get this first post out, so that I can focus on specifics from here on out.

The Naval Recruit - Catholic

As a Catholic, some of my stories have some Characteristics of my faith in them.  This is one of them.  I wrote the story with out the ending that is detailed here, and I wrote this version. 

I got the idea for this story from a writing prompt.  It said to find a picture of a person in a magazine and write 300-500 words about the person.   I picked a National Geographic and saw a young man, barely 20, in the window of a train.  His face was so sad, this is the story I came up with, based on it.   

                                                     The Naval Recruit

I heard the whistle blow and watched as the train began to move.  This was Ron’s third year of college and these separations had become a customary component of our lives.  Still, no matter how often you say goodbye, watching your child slowly pull away does not come easily.

                A face catches my eye and then it is gone.  That face, which was so full of pain and sorrow, and yet so young, has left a enduring impression on me.   I close my eyes and there is that face.  Who is he, why is he so sad?  What is the cause of so much pain and sorrow in such a young man?  I long to know more, reluctantly I resign myself to never getting that opportunity.

It’s been a week and I still see those sorrowful eyes in my dreams.   I can barely taste my coffee, I didn’t sleep well last night, I kept waking with each dream.  Those sorrowful eyes, they would be on my own sons face and I would startle awake.   As if by rote action I flip through the pages in the paper, I hardly know what I am reading, my eyes focus in and out of the pages as the words blur together into blocks of print.  

Suddenly, I am struck, did I fall asleep? Was I having another dreaming?   No, I can’t be, I must be awake, nevertheless there is that face, that sweet yet sorrowful face.   My hands were trembling as I take a sip of coffee and endeavored to steady myself.   The paper did not give many details, his name was Brian; he was a naval recruit and had just finished boot camp.    He was also dead. 

                He took his own life.  After years of abuse from his father he ran away to the Navy.   If he could prove himself, if his father could see him as a man, maybe he would finally earn his respect.    On that early August morning one week ago, he had been heading back to base after a visit with his parents.   The visit did not go well, his father was angry he had left home so suddenly.   The neighbors reported long fights into the night, and a naval buddy said Brain felt his father would never accept him and that his mother never cared or tried to intervene.   

                Closing the paper, I crossed myself and said a prayer for this young man.  Barely the same age as my own child, I contemplated the anguish his mother must be experiencing.   Tears fell from my eyes as I prayed to our Blessed Mother to give this unknown woman strength as she suffered through her pain.   I went to adoration that afternoon, I felt called to pray for this boy.  In the presences of our Lord I prayed for his soul.  I still saw that face, that sweet yet painful and sorrowful face as I closed my eyes in prayer. 

The Naval recruit

I got the idea for this story from a writing prompt.  It said to find a picture of a person in a magazine and write 300-500 words about the person.   I picked a National Geographic and saw a young man, barely 20, in the window of a train.  His face was so sad, this is the story I came up with, based on it.  

                                                     The Naval Recruit
The whistle blew and I looked up as the train began to move. This was Ron’s third year of college and these separations had become a customary component of our lives. Still, no matter how often you say goodbye, watching your child slowly pull away does not come easily.

A face catches my eye and then it is gone. That face, which was so full of pain and sorrow, and yet so young, has left a enduring impression on me. I close my eyes and there is that face. Who is he, why is he so sad? What is the cause of so much pain and sorrow in such a young man? I long to know more, reluctantly I resign myself to never getting that opportunity.

It’s been a week and I still see those sorrowful eyes in my dreams. I can barely taste my coffee, I didn’t sleep well last night, I kept waking with each dream. Those sorrowful eyes, they would be on my own sons face and I would startle awake. As if by rote action I flip through the pages in the paper, I hardly know what I am reading, my eyes focus in and out of the pages as the words blur together into blocks of print.

Suddenly, I am struck, did I fall asleep? Was I having another dreaming? No, I can’t be, I must be awake, nevertheless there is that face, that sweet yet sorrowful face. My hands were trembling as I take a sip of coffee and endeavored to steady myself. The paper did not give many details, his name was Brian; he was a naval recruit and had just finished boot camp. He was also dead.

He took his own life. After years of abuse from his father he ran away to the Navy. If he could prove himself, if his father could see him as a man, maybe he would finally earn his respect. On that early August morning one week ago, he had been heading back to base after a visit with his parents. The visit did not go well, his father was angry he had left home so suddenly. The neighbors reported long fights into the night, and a naval buddy said Brain felt his father would never accept him and that his mother never cared or tried to intervene.

Closing the paper, I said a prayer for this young man. Barely the same age as my own child, I contemplated the anguish his mother must be experiencing. Tears fell from my eyes, I closed the paper and wept.

To read a version of this story with a Catholic ending go here: The Naval Recruit - Catholic

Writing, noveling, story telling... and crafting

Three months ago, I decided I would try to do some creative writing.

I have done very little writing in my life. It's just not the type of thing I felt I would be very good at. My main hold up is that I could never come up with an idea to write about.

My four year old son has been asking me to tell him stories at night, and I let him pick the topic, usually it is about transformers or trucks or something like that, but I really enjoy telling the stories, so I thought, I would look into it a bit more.

I still have no original ideas, so I looked online and found a ton of writing prompts. I had no idea LOL. Seriously, I am/was so clueless about everything related to creative writing.

The first month I wrote some simple short stories that came from some writing prompts and then mid October I started to see the many Nanowrimo posts that inevitable begin to show up. I spent about 2 days perusing the website and message forums and decided to jump in head first and write a novel! It's an absolutely insane to do I thought, but at the same time I was given a great plot out of the blue, and I had to run with with. I prepped for two weeks and then wrote a 53K novel in 16 days. I can not even begin to believe I was able to do it from a creative sense, let alone I was able to stick with it and finish it as I generally have difficulty with follow through :).

By the time I was 3/4 through I was thinking of what to write for my second novel.

I thought I would take the cue of so many other people and make a blog for my writing. I don't know how often I will write something, but since I am no where close to ever getting anything good enough to publish, I figured this would be a great way to get my ideas out and if anyone wants to read them, then that would be great.


I think I'm hooked. At least until something new comes around to take my attention away LOL. Which is why, this blog has two parts, writing and crafting. I have sewn and crafted all my life. I am a quilter, but also like to make fabric toys.

That's the blog in a nutshell. I hope you like it :)