The Beginning of a Book

If you've been following my blog (and I appreciate you sticking with me if you have), you'll notice I am not confining myself to travel writing or anything in particular, although Pacific Grove gets in my sights more often than not because I live here.

I've begun work on a book, but it would be more accurate to say it has begun working on me.  Yesterday's post reflects some of the content in a small glimpse.  I am not going to predict when it will be done or much about it, but I have a feeling you readers will the first to know when it's done.  Don't you feel lucky?  In the meantime, I'll keep on posting here on my blog and looking for your comments.

I've considered trying out several genres and slotting myself into something recognizable to the reading public, and eventually that might happen.  A good bodice ripper might be fun:

Helga, with red lips parted in a teasing smile, threw the clucking chicken back into the henhouse, dropped the pan of corn in the cobbled yard and ran barefooted to her lover, Bob, who sat on a prancing white horse, his black cape flowing in the wind.

"I made you some goulash, my love," she panted.  She wasn't used to running across the yard in bare feet like she had in days of yore.

He reached down for her, puzzled by the goulash remark.  He dimly recalled telling her that he preferred aspic with Wasa crispbread and gruyere cheese.  But, no, it didn't matter.  His loins were aching, his shirt ripping away from his broad tanned chest, waxed hairless as a marble statue.  Their hands touched and it was as if flames leapt up in her bosom, which was heaving like a bellows.

He began to swing her up to his saddle, but the impossibility of their love overwhelmed him.  Yes, he had told her about the aspic and crispbread, he was certain of it.  She let go her hand and she wailed with surprise and shocked disbelief.

Now his choice was no longer in question.  Helga had betrayed him and revealed her true love, the love she had tried to hide deep within her heaving bosom.  Bob looked at the heaving sea of soft flesh and felt disdain.  He knew Urgundheind had always begged for goulash when they were boyhood friends.  He felt bile rising in his throat and hot tears of anguish blind his eyes.  His dark hair streamed dramatically in silhouette in the blowing wind.   His cape was still billowing and the horse's mane and tail also billowed.  The effect was that of a whole clothesline full of freshly cleaned costumes pinned out to dry on a summer's day, whipping and cracking in the stiff breeze blowing at 20 knots or so from the southwest, an unusual direction for this time of year, which was autumn.  

"Helga, this is the last time you will ever see me.  The time has come for me to join the little general at Waterloo and win once and for all.  I must do this in memory of my father who gave me this golden amulet!  You don't love me anymore.  You love Urgundheind, who loves goulash.  Farewell."

"No, Bob!  How can I live without you?  I have nothing but these horrid chickens if you leave me!"  She wailed and sobbed, bosom still heaving -- the dash across the henyard still having its effect on her.

Or, how about a slasher novel:  Blood and guts everywhere and screams galore, a woman running down dark hallways in Topeka while a loud storm thrashes the trees outside.  Oh, and I'd toss in an insane postal service worker, delivering something a bit more sinister than an ordinary envelope, banging heavily on her door....