From Mary’s #WIP, Rosewood…
Once she was done for the day, Miranda headed down Big Island Road and looked for the right mailbox. An old, on its last legs, mailbox stood at the end of a driveway that she would need to drive down, the house not visible from the road. She hoped the Maynards were not the types who brandished shotguns at the sight of any stranger as she tentatively drove the car down the overgrown drive.
The drive began to clear and opened up to a view of a one story shack with an actual tar paper covered roof. It had seen better days or maybe there had never been better days. As Miranda got out of the car with package in hand and headed towards the house, she took in the place in its entirety realizing it could be termed a hovel.
Her eye snagged on a bit of color in the front yard. A caramel colored gazing ball on a concrete stand, the kind she used to see when she visited her grandparents in the Midwest. She marveled at this bit of whimsy among an otherwise drab and gray scene.
Looking up from it, she could see an elderly woman in a shapeless dress sitting in shadows on the porch. She stared at Miranda.
Miranda cleared her throat and said, “Hello…I’m your new neighbor.” There was no response. “Um…Miranda Chesney.” Still no response.
“Anyway…this package came for you.” She looked down at the label and read aloud: “‘For Bertram Maynard’.”
A gravelly voice came out of the woman in a thick almost indecipherable accent. “Maynard ain’t here.”
“Oh, okay. Well, I’ll just give it to you then?”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh…I’m sorry.” Miranda walked closer, wanting to just throw the package on the porch and get out of there. “So are you…uh, related?”
With lightning speed, all of sudden the woman stood up and reached over with gnarled fingers, grabbing the package out of Miranda’s grip.
Miranda backed away saying, “Okay then…” The woman had sat back down and her gaze had already wandered away from Miranda. She said nothing more.
Walking quickly back to her car, Miranda’s eye caught a crudely etched outline of a cat on a post by an old shed that was barely hanging on. It was the same symbol that was at the back end of one of her own outbuildings, the drive-in shed. It struck her as odd and her mind snagged on finding out its meaning.
As she pulled down the drive away from the woman and the house, she took inventory of all she had heard about the locals in Guinea: cut off, isolated, and all the rest. If that woman was an example, she fit the profile but seemed to take it a step beyond. How would someone cut off and isolated be affected in their aging years? Miranda shook off the question, not wanting to think about the answers.
Writer’s WIP Questionnaire – 2
In the past two weeks, I have felt mostly happy about the progress of my WIP.
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Comment: I am in the middle of my second pass of a rough draft. After having been away from it for some weeks, coming back has been a bit…horrifying. A dissecting process has been undertaken…
- In the past two weeks, I have mostly managed to balance my writing life with the rest of my life.
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Comment: I really have to make the writing life happen in between the chaos of everything else. But I do make it happen.
- In the past two weeks, I have made drastic changes to my WIP.
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Comment: I realized there was way too much backstory in the first fifteen or so pages and so a major reconstruction is occurring. Not too fun, but necessary.
- In the past two weeks, I have mostly suffered from ‘writer’s block’.
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Comment: Nope. No writer’s block here.
- In the past two weeks, I have focussed on one project.
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Comment: Unfortunately, I am not able to do so because I have two projects at different stages of the game. And I also had a blog tour on my debut published novel to tend to. So I have been spreading out the efforts. Not ideal but that is the case.
Thanks for dropping by, Mary! That’s a spooky-looking WIP – I’m intrigued! I hear you about spreading out efforts – all the best!
Mary Kendall lived in old (and haunted) houses growing up which sparked a life-long interest in history and story-telling. She earned degrees in history related fields and worked as an historian for many years. Her fiction writing is heavily influenced by the past which she believes is never really dead and buried. Fueled by black coffee and a possible sprinkling of Celtic fairy dust, she tends to find inspiration in odd places and sometimes while kneading bread dough. The author resides in Maryland with her family (husband, three kids, barn cat and the occasional backyard hen) who put up with her mad scribbling at inconvenient hours. The Spinster’s Fortune, her debut novel, is twisty tale of family deception murky with gothic undertones recently released on 6 April 2021.
Find out more about Mary, at:
Find me on my website at http://www.marykendallauthor.com.
Or check me out on Instagram (mary.kendall.author), Facebook (@Mary.kendall.3152) and Twitter
(@MaryLavin49).
I am also on goodreads! https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21221557.Mary_Kendall
And Bookbub! https://www.bookbub.com/profile/mary-kendall
The Spinster’s Fortune may be purchased at mybook.to/fortune (free on Kindle Unlimited).
Morwenna Blackwood, Author 