Write What You Know, by Kait Carson

“Write what you know.” The quote is variously attributed to Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway. The Hemingway version actually reads “I decided that I would write one story about each thing I knew about.” Tortured English for my two cents, but who am I to argue with Hemingway. He was an ace at covering his bases, and as he matured, he must have realized that writing what he knew might be a tad boring so he decided to ask himself “What did I know best that I had not written about and lost? What did I know about truly and care for the most?”

The last is the money question for me. What do I know about truly and care for the most? What question do I want to let my characters help me examine? The answers have nothing to do with spending months cooking on a boat—when I had no idea how to cook, or spending every weekend in the Caribbean throughout the 1980s. Yes, I know all about those things, but who cares?

What do I know about truly because of those experiences? Gratitude. The men on that boat taught me to cook. Their efforts kept the captain from putting me ashore when he discovered I was a fraud. Because of them I can make a full meal from any three ingredients, and I know the gossamer silk feel of the trade winds when they kiss your cheek in your sleep. Mercy. A woman in Sint Maarten took me into her home and nursed me back to health when I had dengue fever and no place to stay. She taught me that having enough is being rich, sharing it doubles the wealth, and there is always room for one more. Because of her, I know the honey-sweet taste of sucking on a hibiscus flower, the prickly feeling of a bananaquit landing on your arm, and that peas (a type of bean) and rice can extend any meal.

If I’m doing my job as a writer, then each character I write is informed by their own unique blend of qualities that breathes life into them. The gruff sailor can realistically display a gentle side. A woman can follow her heart to defy her family and display Herculean kindness. These are things that I care the most about. The deep well from which mankind draws to form and shape behaviors that are as often ephemeral as they are immutable. Those are the questions I want to examine, how each character, in life and fiction, is the architect of their own story.

I have seen the future – They were right, by Kait Carson

The future is a funny thing. You can miss it if you’re not paying attention. Maybe that’s because by the time it happens it isn’t the future anymore. It’s evolved around us and it doesn’t seem quite as bizarre, or even as futuristic, as it sounded way back when.

What was your first foray into the future? Mine was at the 1964 Worlds’ Fair in the ATT/Bell Pavilion. Bell Laboratories unveiled the Picturephone. The recollection that I have of it is different to what I have read. I’m not sure if the reality evolved over the course of the Fair or if it’s one of those cases of memory trumps reality. I remember that Picturephones were set up in futuristic phone booths. Two callers entered the booths and each caller saw the other on the screen. The phones looked like a business phone with push buttons which were considered posh since most home phones were rotary dial in those days, and the screen was oval like a Jetson house. Research suggests the calls were completed in Disneyland, not between booths in New York. If that’s so, then someone teleported my best friend Bernie. Now THAT’S advanced technology and no one is talking about it even today.

I’d forgotten all about Picturephones until I read a blog that cited a New Yorker article. The article rehashed 50-year old predictions of what scientists and engineers expected to be commonplace in 2018. One of those things was the Picturephone. It seems Bell was quite serious about the 1964 technology and hopeful to have it in common usage in the 1970s. Bell’s timeline was off, but it’s undeniable that the seeds Bell planted in 1964 at the World’s Fair have turned into Skype, FaceTime, and a multitude of other Internet face to face communication services.

In 1964 I saw the future, but in 2019, it took someone who looked at the event as history to point out the event.

How about you? Have you seen the future? Did you recognize it as it happened?

Why I Hate Some People by E. B. Davis

In a blog I wrote last month, I mentioned that I had twisted my ankle after falling into a two-foot deep hole on the beach someone had failed to fill in while I scanned the waves for a drowning tourist. After a month, I was on the mend. Then, the knee above that ankle started giving me nasty pings. Knowing the knee connected by bones and ligaments to the ankle, I figured some of the impact I incurred in the original injury might have affected my knee. Also, in my body’s attempt to get rid of the ankle inflammation that fluid might had traveled up to the next joint—my knee.  After all, I had been walking strangely for a month until the ankle mended. So, I waited it out. At the beginning of August, I again was on the mend. I was planning on getting back to the gym. And then—

I was cleaning a spa located on a deck at a vacation house. As I walked down from the deck two dogs accosted me. The owner, the renter, was nearby. The dogs were aggressive, barking and growling. I said to the owner, “Sir, could you get hold of your dogs?” He didn’t react. He stood there looking at me as his dogs continued to bark and snarl. No tails wagged. It wasn’t until I again reiterated my request as more of a demand that he finally took hold of the dogs’ collars and took them into the house. He could clearly see I was frightened.

I like dogs. I have dog friends, Dinty, a Chocolate Lab, and Berry, a Goldendoodle. There’s a dog on our spa and pool route, Lilah, a Golden Lab, who I love. Oscar, the pit bull who is owned by the Deputy Sheriff living in my neighborhood, stops by when they go on walks. They are friendly dogs I know or have gotten to know since they are well behaved. But I’ve also had bad experiences with dogs I don’t know and who don’t know me. I’m not paranoid, but I am cautious—with good reason. Most dogs protect their territory and owners. It’s instinct. Why don’t some dog owners know and understand this?

The renters were staying for two weeks requiring us to return to the house to service their spa and pool. I thought if we went early, we might avoid the dogs. We arrived at the house, but kept our car in a common area beyond the rental house’s driveway. After we got out our equipment and as soon as we walked toward the house, the owner let the dogs out (with a clap of his hands). The dogs charged us. My husband’s response was to fight—he went toward them and made threatening motions. My reaction—flight—I opened my car door and dove in. As soon as the owner got our reaction, the dogs were called back into the house. I phoned my boss to report what had happened and told her I couldn’t service the house. While on the phone, I looked at the house. The owner and his friend were standing at the rail of the upper deck laughing at us.

It didn’t take more than an hour before my knee started swelling. When I dove into my car, I must have torn or stressed the joint. For what purpose did this happen? To be an amusement, fodder for the renter, who thought it was oh-so-funny that I was afraid of strange dogs. Nope, I don’t hate the dogs—I hate people—the owners. Not all, but I seem to attract sadistic sociopaths.

I’d like to externalize the experience by using it for fiction. But deep down I ask—how can you write about people when you hate them? If you have answers for me, please let me know. I’ve got time on my hands now that I must once again restrict movement to gain long-term mobility.

Coming Upon--Situations by E. B. Davis

(Republished from original posted 3/5/11)

Happy hour had arrived. Friends and I decided to walk to our neighborhood sound beach, a place where we enjoy the close of the day while pondering current events, family matters, and other topics of interest. We are accustomed to taking drinks and our chairs with us. However, that day, because the wind was strong, we decided to postpone happy hour until after our walk, leaving our libations and comforts at home. I make note of this so that you know strong drink, critical speculation, malicious gossip nor soft seating influenced us.

The winter storms had driven pillows of now drying sea grass on the beach, in some places several feet high. Its spongy thickness softened our footfalls as we walked slowly to the shoreline. At our backs, the wind gusted from due east. We pondered if the wind’s direction had driven the seagulls to find shelter on the sound rather than their usual ocean beach habitat. Their presence would have interfered in our enjoyment of happy hour had we not decided to postpone. Sea birds have a nasty habit of opening their canned food by grasping tasty bivalve scallops in their beaks, flying to great heights, and then dropping them like bombs on the beach. Gravity makes can opening efficient, but also creates hazards for unsuspecting humans.

I stepped judiciously through the broken scallop shells enjoying the sound view, but glanced inland to the marsh and was startled to see a flat-bottomed boat buried under the sea grass mounds on the beach. As we had walked down the declining beach, its presence had been completely obscured. From the shoreline, we could see that the boat, a type normally used in the sound’s shallow waters, was approximately eighteen feet long and its Japanese outboard motor was still attached. A small boat, its total depth was around four feet. Startled by its presence and our curiosity whetted, we all approached. Inside, the bench seats were still intact. Although sea grass filled the interior, we saw the steering wheel sticking up and a flotation devise’s blue color visible in the sea grass layers.

We stared at the boat pondering its presence. I tried to imagine, as I’m sure my friends did as well, the circumstances of how it had beached, filled with sea grass and had become buried on the beach. Who would leave a boat, motor attached, to the elements when even a small boat such as this cost about ten thousand dollars? And then, a metal object lying on the port railing glimmered in the last rays of the day’s sun. In mass, we moved closer and saw—handcuffs, only one half remaining with two links of chain intact.

Adjourning to the house for libations, we speculated on the half pair of handcuffs, what their presence might mean, and if the boat and the handcuffs were connected in story. We did not go back with shovels to find a body on the floor of the boat covered with sea grass. Our fiction will suffice and if there is a body, someone else will find it. We will scan the headlines to see if reality matches our imaginations, knowing that even if our reticence left a mystery, we left the scene untouched.