Myth Smasher

I turned into a myth smasher last Saturday. Not that I'm entirely to blame. How was I to know that the kids still believed olives grew with the pimento inside? We'd somehow gotten on a conversation about Thanksgiving and food. The number one food of choice was .......OLIVES!

Jenny wanted to know how they grew. I shared what agricultural knowledge I had about how olives grew on bushes. Somewhere in the conversation I let the truth slip out---olives grew with a pit inside, not a pimento. The furor, the uproar, the protests of denial! Olives didn't grow with the red thing inside? Nope. The kids were equally horrified to know you can't just pick an olive and eat it like a pea or tomato. I'm sure they'll never look at an olive the same way again.

For those who enjoy the fictional Jenny, she makes a brief appearance in the November issue of Fandangle online magazine. The piece is a fictional essay called, Thanksgiving Is. . . .

I also started work on a long overdue project. It's a cozy mystery. Figured I could spare a half an hour a night to write a first draft. So far I've managed two session. The first night I kept going and wrote for almost an hour. Last night I did 45 minutes. I also spent my time in the laundromat yesterday morning working on a chapter by chapter outline. It was fun to see how much I could get done racing the washers and dryers. So many surprising characters and situations are popping up it's like making a new discovery every time I sit down to write. I have a tentative plan, some scenes and most of my characters.

We had a glorious two days of summerlike weather. Now the cold and rain has come to stay awhile. A good time to stay inside and write.