Listening to the Muse

Writers are asked "where do you get your ideas from?" Oops, do be grammatically correct, I should have written, "From where to you get your ideas?" Glad that's out of the way. I shall continue. Writers are inveterate eavesdroppers. For instance, my husband and I had breakfast out one morning last week. In the booth behind me, were two women and a man. The man had his back to me. They looked to be in their sixties.

As I sipped my coffee, I heard the man say, "I loaned her twelve roosters." I tried and tried to hear more of the conversation and failed. What on earth would someone do with twelve roosters? Not to service hens. One rooster can handle lots of hens. About a day or so later I read a report in the local newspaper about the arrest of a group of men involved in a cock fighting ring. The SPCA was called in and all the roosters had to be destroyed. Some were badly injured. Eyes out. Legs ripped. Was the man sitting behind me lending roosters for cock fighting? Hmm. I will never know.

Another line I heard as I passed two women on a staircase in a lovely country hotel in England. "She was thirty-five when she learned she'd been adopted and she lost her mind."

We listen. We watch. We imagine. We create characters. It's all grist for our writing mill. My first book with Cerridwen Press, A Very Difficult Man, is scheduled for release in paperback in October/November. Here is the cover. Check my web site for blurb and excerpt.

Thanks for coming by.

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