Bit Too Much Today

I ran away from home today.
Not Literally.

I just ... had to get OUT of the house and that was odd considering that I was barely IN the house for an hour before I bailed. 

As previously mentioned, my family has a lot of dogs ... being dog sledders. With this warm weather that Michigan has gotten since the Polar Vortex soared over us in a Snowmageddon ... I think that they've all gotten just a bit too active for my taste. I get home and it's like listening to an out of tune Puppy Choir. 

Woof, Woof, Woof.
Woof, Woof, Woof. 
Bark, bark, bark. Bark-bark.

(And yes that WAS supposed to be the doggy version of Jingle Bells to the best of my knowledge)

So YAY for you, dear readers ... you get a blog post ON TIME for once. Thank the dogs for that! 
Plus, I get some peace and quiet to apply for more jobs here in town and OUT of town again. Have you ever seen Seattle? Me either. But I applied to a job there too. 

All right! I gave you an entire post on books, an entire post on teas, and now .... you get my Overactive Imagination. 

I'm a daydreamer. I got into my head for my first novel about what would happen if a vampire, (no teasing. I wrote the outline for this novel back in the 8th grade. BEFORE Twilight) took a human as a pet. Much like we would have cats or dogs or chinchillas or alligators or what have you. And what would happen if that vampire started to form an attachment to his pet and the pet developed an attachment to her master?
From there, my novel took form. The still untitled novel. I've rewritten the whole thing three different times and I'm pretty sure I've scored a homerun with this last rewrite. 
But all because of daydreaming did it come about. 
I leave no idea left unnoticed. You never know if something is chosen for you for a reason. Also because I have no idea when inspiration will strike ... most of my ideas are stored in VARIOUS notebooks.  
Want to know the Writer's Secret? 

*leans in to whisper* 10. Cent. Notebooks.

Typically, they look just like this (above) and they're generic spiral-bound in different colors. Around the Back-To-School sales at Meijer or Walmart, they put out BOXES of these notebooks and sell them for about $.10 a piece. My bestie Jeanne and I used to raid these boxes every year for PILES of them. The only difference is that I would use or LOSE my notebooks so much faster because Jeanne's handwriting is so cute, dainty, and delicate where mine is usually a hastily written scrawl. 

Either way, the invention of the $.10 notebook was genius. 

So there IS an upside to having an overactive imagination. Especially when you can kind of stare off into dreamland, thinking of a time when you would stay up all night on Christmas Eve playing with your Polly Pockets and waiting for Santa Claus to show up. I never caught that tricky guy. *shakes head in shame* 
Or ... when I was in the middle of a crowded mall and someone pushed me out of the way. On the outside, I said nothing and just kept walking. But in my head, I whirled around and leapt up high in the air (because of course in dreamland, I have mega Ninjitsu skill) and then knocked the guy to the ground and demanded an apology for his coarse behavior. BAM! Dream Taryn wins. 
I owe my imagination to books and stories. Once you get into a good book, it's really true what they say ... it changes you. Whether you know it or not. 

I'm pretty sure that the only reason I read so much is BECAUSE I can imagine myself in a story so easily. 

Like .... when I was reading The Selection by Kiera Cass. I was reading one part where America runs out into the garden to get some fresh air and I could ACTUALLY see myself having her same conversation with Prince Maxon ... but not saying all the STUPID stuff that gets her into so much trouble. OH if you could shake some sense into a character. And my goodness do I wish I DID live in that world. I would show America how NOT to get herself into so much trouble. UGH! She can be dumb. Still really recommend that series though. Just saying. 

*sighs* 

I think I've decided to share some of my randomness with you all. I think you've deserved it, don't you? 

To Breathe Again

Written by Taryn Elizabeth Love

Prologue

                “Come on now, Miss Carraday! Put the gun down!” the cop ordered her. “You don’t want to hurt anybody do you?”

                “How do you know what I want to do?” Beth demanded. “How do you know? You don’t know me. You didn’t know my parents. You don’t know what’s been going on in my life.” She put her finger to the trigger and pointed her gun at the intended target. “My life has been completely destroyed this past year and I’ve had enough of it. I just want it to stop.”

                “Hurting somebody or yourself isn’t going to stop that, now is it?”

                “SHUT UP!” she screamed. “Just shut up!” Then she pulled the trigger.

Chapter One

                Tilda Foster hadn’t spoken to her younger sister in over 16 years. Her niece, Beth had been two years old the last she’d seen her. She had moved to Lemon Grove, CA, opened her store and had tried, without success to not think about her estranged family members.

                Thursday was an ordinary day. Tilda tied her waist-length hair into a tight braid; she burned incense to her goddess and walked downstairs to open the store she owned, Little Wonder-Land. She had just turned on the OPEN sign when Tilda heard the phone ring. She picked up on the third ring and greeted breathily, “Blessed Be! This is Little Wonder-Land, how can I help you?” In just a few short sentences on the other line, Tilda’s world came to a crashing halt. Time stopped and her heart ceased its beating. The music in her shop slowed to an impossible speed, the people on the streets froze in mid-step. And Tilda was afraid to process what the man on the other end of the line was trying to convey to her.

                “Say it again,” Tilda breathed out. “What happened?”

                “Ma’am! We need to know what you plan to do. This is extremely important.” But Tilda heard no more. The phone dropped from her hand and clattered to the floor. Tilda sank down behind the counter and hugged her knees to her chest. She clutched a small pendant in her hand and began to rock back and forth as she stared, without really seeing, out in front of her. Her sister was dead. Her brother-in-law was dead. Her niece was badly injured, but was stable. This couldn’t be happening. Not to her sister. It was impossible. Her sister had always had God of hers on her side. Tilda had believed that He would have protected her from everything under the heavens. And now she was dead and her niece was alone in a hospital in Chicago, Illinois. The bell above the front door to her shop rang and Tilda shook her head slightly to clear her mind. She stood up slowly and forced a smile on her lips as she greeted the customer walking into her store.

                “Tilda Foster, blessed be!” The customer was a regular. Her name was Margo and she’d been a practicing Wiccan for over thirty years. Margo had actually introduced Tilda to her coven, and it had made Tilda feel right at home in such a new city when she was just moving in. Margo approached her now and she furrowed her brow in puzzlement. “Now I know that something is wrong, my dear. Your aura is so dark. What is it deary?”

                “Margo, I have to go to Chicago.”

                “The goddess certainly loves to give us obstacles. It’s her way of showing her divine love. You know that,” the woman gushed.

                “Yes, but I’m afraid it’s worse than that.” Tilda took a breath. “My sister and her husband have been killed. And my niece is all alone at the hospital. I’m just not sure what to do.”

                “Oh my!” Margo came around the counter and hugged Tilda. “Uphold your strength, my sister heart. You will get through this.” She disengaged from the embrace quickly and cleared her throat. “If there is anything that either I or the coven can do for you, let it be known.”

                “Please keep me in your prayers. I do believe that I will need your strength,” she replied to her friend.

                “Consider it done.” Margo looked around the store. It was very clean and tidy, much like Tilda herself. “Now, first things first. You have to lock up and go upstairs and pack for Chicago. If you’re going to go and check on your niece, you can’t exactly do that with a whole shop full of people.”

                “I guess not,” Tilda said, forcing another smile. “Thank you Margo.”

                “You’re welcome. Now shoo!”

There! That's the first chapter of the novel I am currently repairing and editing. I realized how much was flawed with this one. It's about Beth Carraday. She was the only survivor in an 'accident' that took her parents lives. The only relative left is her Aunt Tilda and their lives clash as Beth, a Christian is forced to live with her aunt, a practicing Wiccan who left the Christian faith some 20 years ago. 
It's supposed to be a story of redemption and how God can mend ANY relationship. But then ... somehow the story got REALLY confusing so I'm revamping it. 

I hope that this is a suitable hook to pull you into the story. I thought so. 

Well ... I think it's time to take off. It's been a long day and I ran out of tea. Time to go home.

Be Open, Be Loving, Be Yourself
Taryn