This southern thriller fiction novel has been a decade underground. I wrote, re-wrote, re-titled, and changed characters until I believed that I was sharing a story that you won't want to put down.
I can promise you this, you will never look at a No2 pencil the same again.
I'll update when I get a approximate release date.
Happy 50th Anniversary Charleston Magazine. Your anniversary inspired a little time travel back to 1975 with you. What was this “come ya” girl doing in Charleston in 1975? From what I can remember, it was a blast. I was doing the Crocodile Rock with Elton John, Olivia Newton John was every high school boy's dream girl, singing "Have You Ever Been Mellow," Freddie Mercury was belting out "Bohemian Rhapsody"with Queen, and I was rocking with Donna Summer under a disco ball at Stonehenge on Rivers Avenue singing, "Love to love you baby."
The 70's were pretty chill, the hangover decade following the peace, love, sleep in and smoke out Hippie era. Can’t say that I or my friends were hippies, but we were hippie-ish. As per usual, fads that start in California take a while to get to South Carolina. Even longer in my case, because there were only two channels that came in through the rabbit ear antennas and my Dad claimed both of them. One was for the news and the other for Gunsmoke or Hee Haw.
Happy Rain was the closest thing to a hippie that I knew of. It was however rumored that there were real hippies in downtown Charleston, but — they slept all day and only came out at night.
It's all well and good though, my friends and I did our part to contribute in the early 70's. We colored peace signs on our book covers and wore bell bottoms, hip huggers, halter tops, Maxi's, mini's, embroidered and painted jeans, chevron shirts and dresses, floppy hats, sizzler dresses, and clogs.
We thought we were "Far Out" and knew it all, then a stray would move to town from California and show us something that we were missing, like reciting Poe at parties.
As outliers, living in Dorchester County, Charleston was our destination long before Conde Naste put it on the map. We would feign fright at having to traverse the narrow Cooper River Bridge to get to one of our favorite date night restaurants, The Trawler on Shem Creek. I can still taste the crab dip on club crackers they brought out with your drinks.
On a hot summer morning in 1975 you would find me stuffing my VW Super-Beetle with a friend or two, an ice filled Styrofoam cooler holding a six pack of Tab and pimento cheese sandwiches. Destination — Folly Beach. After baking in the sun for 4 hours on a shiny aluminum beach blanket covered in baby oil, we would head over to the Atlantic Restaurant for a beer. I always thought that place was going to fall right into the ocean with me in it. I swore I could feel it moving with the tide. The pier was still there then as well, but it was graffitied out and kind of sketchy.
If our beach day was at Isle of Palms, we would head to a gas station afterwards to spit shine ourselves off in the sink and spray down with Windsong perfume before heading over to the Windjammer to hear a band. I remember putting my makeup on in the mirror while customers banged on the door threatening to get the manager if we didn’t come out.
The Flying Dutchman on Dorchester Road was the best music venue around. I saw Lynyrd Skynyrd perform there in 1974 for $5.
Mostly, we did a lot of "hanging out" in 1975. Charleston, Folly Beach, Isle of Palms, parks, river banks, cooling off in, or floating the Edisto, crabbing the creeks on Johns Island, fishing in country ponds until it got too hot to fish and then peeling off our clothes to go swimming. Some evenings caught us hunkered down behind a sand dune or in a cornfield watching the sunset with a bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry wine.
The ride to our Charleston destinations was half the fun. We’d fumble through what looked like a tackle box of 8 track cassettes to find a selection we could sing to. Sometimes the tape would break, which induced baby boomer road rage. I’ve seen a tenth of a mile of cassette tape strung out on 1-26 before the plastic casing was released.
Thanks for the road trip Charleston Magazine. I'm glad we could "hang out" together. I wish that I could provide pics of the era, but only a few of us had cameras back then. THANK GOD!
We go way back, Thelma and I, like 2 score and 10 years, (which sounds better than half a century) and have brought home many a grain of sand together.
Our beach attire is a little different now, we aren't wearing teeny weeny bikinis hidden under cut off short/short jeans. Today we look more like mall walkers with Baptist shorts on (2 inches over the knee.)
We won’t lug coolers and an antennaed radio down to the water like we did in the past, nor will we slather ourselves with Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil. Instead we will drink bottled water and paint our faces white with 70% zinc sunblock.
Years ago we dubbed ourselves Thelma and Louise, from the 90's movie of the same name. Our planned adventures have been quite hilarious, our unplanned life adventures make them pale in comparison. Unlike Thelma and Louise, we have never driven off a cliff, but we've fallen off them just the same, at least that was — until this morning.
Okay, so it wasn't a cliff, but there was a slightly airborne moment when we left asphalt and landed onto a sandy road covered with flooding rain water. We never saw a "pavement ends" sign, don't think there was one.
The fact that GPS sent us down this desolate road in the dark, after a horrific lightning and rainstorm, wasn't questioned by either of us, even though I knew we had never traveled a dirt road on our way to the beach, especially one that is 8.9 miles long. If GPS says so, then it must be right. We really didn't feel like making decisions anyway. Talk, just talk.
The dirt road got a little dicey at times, but we plowed straight through. At one point we did think about turning around and I noticed that the only turn around we had seen was located near the ruins of a haunted church and that was a big fat no. There wasn’t a single home on this road, nothing but pines and fields. We just talked and laughed and bounced and uttered a few WTF’s as we avoided muddy waters, and obstacles, the best we could.
A couple of years ago I picked Thelma up for an adventure and we talked 4 hours straight, right to the Georgia/Alabama state line.
Her husband called, she paused, looked at me, and asked, "Where are we going?
"We're going to Alabama Thelma," You didn't even know where we were going for 2 days?
"Nope, didn't care. " she answered.
Neither did we today. A few miles down we had a huge Red Tailed Hawk fly right into our lights and swerve in the nick of time. Thank God, I don't know how our friendship would survive Thelma killing my spirit animal. Another swerve for a large chunk of a fallen tree, a teeny armadillo, but not a single vehicle.
Between the storms, the dirt road and the obstacle courses, we missed the sunrise by a few minutes. We wouldn't have seen it anyway in the cloud cover, but it peeked out right after we crested the sandy path to the ocean. We plopped our chairs in the wet sand and raised our hands in the air at the beauty of it all, and talked. .
Life is better than being punctual. Sometimes we have to get off the beaten path.
The throwback hit first with the smell of the store, it was as if the concrete walls had absorbed the decades bygone.
"If you could go remove all manmade obstacles, and tourist from a single place to have just to yourself, where would you go?"
Yes, that is my muse asking — she has kept me content that I can see without going. That's what imagination can do. I know who my muse is, without a doubt. I walk with her and talk with her every chance I get, Creation. She is outside of every window I peer out. Every door that is closed is Narnia's portal.
My muse opens the jetties for me, fills me with inspiration, makes me believe in impossibilities, tells me not to confine myself to the grounded plains, to a calendar of years, but to reach now, today, for the skies, the treetops and beyond.
She's taught me to see what lies beneath the plastic and metal rebar and pylons. I can mentally remove everything from a scene. The big house on the peninsula, the dock, the boat, the cell towers, mosquitoes, and then, there it is — creation. The tundra is no longer private with million dollar price tags, it belongs to all of us, and always leads me to the ultimate creator.
I've been blessed to live in some beautiful places and there are some that I've longed to visit so badly, so long forgotten, not even on an an Atlas. I want to trek there by foot, like a nomad, holding a stick to a ground charged with the long dead sinew of the extinct eastern Chestnut, and the nascent frozen tundra of the ice age beneath it. My stick with a point would remove all obstacles and trappings of man along the way. Yes, that would be my superpower, busting obstacles.
And — all of this while I plan what I'm cooking for dinner. Can y'all tell I'm reading The Chronicles of Narnia? lol. Read books, get inspired.
The photo is mine, taken at Biltmore, Asheville.
