Romancing The Rock

Here is a piece I wrote for the FaithWriters Weekly Challenge. The topic was “Inspiration/Block (for the writer).”

“Don’t look now,” Megan told her sister in a conspiratorial whisper while they shared a coffee after church. “I think someone is spying on us from inside that heating vent up there.”

 Kathy almost choked on her drink as laughter erupted.

 “Seriously.” Megan’s lips twitched. “I think I saw light reflect off something.”

 “You have an over-active imagination sister-girl.” Kathy grinned. “You would get along well with my friend Wendy. We were at the beach the other day and she thought she might find a buried relic if she dug in the sand. But, she likes the horror stories, if you know what I mean.”

 “What, so it is a relic with evil powers, is it? Or maybe it still has the remains of a hand attached to it. Yes, and then you would have to solve the gruesome murder of the…”

 “Enough!” Kathy spluttered her coffee again. “You two could write a book together.”

 Megan grinned.

 On the way home from church, she sang along to the radio, while her children argued over a packet of lollies in the back seat. As they drove past some huge, overhead powerlines, she reached to turn the volume down.

 “Hey kids. Imagine if those great big towers came to life and ripped their cables loose, and they walked all over the land with the wires like arms, swinging them around and electrocuting people.”

 “Mum! You’re weird!”

 Megan’s lips twitched again. “No, really. Just imagine. They are controlled by some aliens who want to take over the world. You would have to be the hero son, and save the world. How would you stop them?”

 The five-year-old’s eyes lit up. “I would climb up to the top and bash them till they stopped hurting people.”

 Everyone laughed at his enthusiasm for action.

 “Or maybe you could just tickle them.”

 “What?” Samantha was ten.

 “Didn’t you know those power towers are very ticklish?” Megan rolled her eyes as though this should be common knowledge.

 Sam shook her head as she giggled. “Mum, you should write a book.”

 Megan grinned.

 Over lunch, she read her Bible, and seemed engrossed in every word.

 “What are you reading Mum?” Eight year old Lisa interrupted.

 “I’m reading about Jonathan and his armour-bearer.”

 “Can you tell me?”

 Megan launched into a colourful retelling of this Bible story, using the simple verses for inspiration to a more detailed version, and soon her other children were gathered around. Even her husband put down his newspaper to listen.

 “Wow! That was cool!” Lisa said when the story was over.

 “You know,” her hubby spoke up. “You should really write some of this stuff down, hon. It’s very good.”

 “Maybe,” she said with a shrug and a secret grin. She got up and went to her computer. Her friend Melanie was on-line and Megan smiled again.

 “Hey Mel,” she typed.

 “Meggy! Guess what I just read?”

 “Sounds exciting…do tell. J”

“I was just reading newspapers from the 1870s and I found a wanted ad. It was for a child to be given in adoption, described as an interesting three-year-old girl. Sad huh?”

 “Yeah, sad. But also food for the imagination.”

 “Like, why was she being adopted?”

 “And the word ‘interesting’ could mean any number of things. Was she difficult? Sickly? Did she have a disability?”

 “I just thought interesting would mean perhaps chatty, or something.”

 “Mmm. Mel, when you first said ‘wanted ad’, I thought of the criminal kind. You know, a thousand pound reward kind of thing. Imagine if you were looking back in those papers and you saw your own name there with reward offered, and even a grainy old photo of you. You would have to unravel the truth of how you could be in the past and present at the same time—and what did you do that was so heinous? It could be a time-travel, whodunnit mystery.”

 “OMGosh Meg! You have a twisted mind. You should write a book.”

 “Yeah, working on it. 😉 Catch you later. XXOO”

 “Love ya. XO”

 Megan smiled at her computer and clicked open a manuscript she had been working on. She already had more than enough ideas to fill a book. Maybe even three books. She grinned again as she began to type. All those other novel ideas would have to wait.