“May I Offer You a Sherry?”

“If you could be — even briefly — one of your OWN characters… which character would you be? Why? For how long?”

That’s easy.

The women in my free-style poems are in sad situations, or at least, bittersweet ones.

One is dying; it’s based on a dear friend of mine, the one who got me to get my first poems published and gave me the strength to write, submit and publish more works.
Another is one who will not let go of her past; that is based on a relative.
The third is also based on an extended family member and that is the one that is bittersweet. It’s based on a dream my mother had, which I had forgotten until I had a similar one about 15 years later.

As for stories, several are supernatural. One is actually me, based on what happened to me, but no one wants to believe, (I didn’t either!)  Another is based also on some of what has happened to me but to a much farther extent, and based on what a friend told me of her experiences, (to make it a hybrid story), to which I added plot and ending. (Or rather, I will add an ending. The problem here is that the characters changed on me. I never ceased to be amazed at how they have plans of their own!)

Another story sprang to me when someone told me of her experience as a participant in a magic act, but I don’t want to be any of the characters, even though the story is upbeat.

I am also a character based on something that happened with the family in my rhyming children’s story, but I already played that part.

I also went through the evening that the play-to-be-rewritten-as-a-story is based. Although I changed some of the circumstances and certainly the end, and I don’t want to relive that night.

There is the story with the plot handed to me by Grandson#1 when he was 13. The story has a good start and a good end, with some parts in the middle finished. I can’t see myself as either of the main women in the story, and I don’t think that I fit into the angel’s part, either.

There are a few other starts, but as for finished or nearly finished works, there is one that I would step into in a heartbeat. It’s the first full-novel that I ever considered writing and I have it close to finished.

I borrowed on my past experiences and situations for it enough to upset The Husband, who is afraid others will think that the characters are actually us, but I needed a solid, comfortable foundation. The idea of the husband being a history teacher, wanting to see the historical places in their vacation spot, gave perfect opportunities to have the storyline play out. The problems of small schools gave me more areas to work within the story, so I wrote what I knew, which helped while I concentrated on the rest of the plot, the subplots and dialogue.

Synopsis: A woman takes her husband on an impromptu vacation to a small Caribbean island. Although a friend arranges for Sherry to pay only a small fee at her family’s resort, her husband is reluctant to go, which only adds to the nagging feeling in her that something is wrong.
Alan’s been distant recently; he’s suddenly staying late at school and Sherry has heard one female teacher’s name a little too often.  Sherry refuses to believe the worst, even refusing her fears to become conscious thoughts. Once on the island, she finds an old brick wall with a cryptic message carved into it and she becomes obsessed with deciphering it.
Can Sherry find the meaning of the message, while ignoring the writing on her own wall?

I want to be Sherry, who is in her mid-thirties, (to feel that again!) She has a few of my attributes, but she is stronger than I was when younger.

I want to be Sherry, if only for the Caribbean vacation!

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