Storytelling

By Cricket McRae

This time of year always feels frantic to me, and this December is no exception. My deadline for the third book in the Sophie Reynolds Homecrafting Series is looming, I’m editing another manuscript, and the marketing for the first book in the series, Lye in Wait, fills hours every day. Still, keeping my head above water would be manageable if it weren’t for all this holiday business.

The problem is that Christmas can get so out of hand. This year, out of desperation, I put my foot down. One day for shopping (it was a very long day, but still). Only three kinds of cookies (okay, two kinds, plus peanut butter fudge). We aren’t throwing a party this year, and only attending three. And the decorating: I gave myself four hours. No outside lights…and no tree.

So it’s festive, but pretty simple around our house. It feels good. It’ll take less time to undo come January. And that’s less time away from my desk, all over again.

However, believe it or not, I’m not just griping about how Christmas is interfering with my precious writing schedule. I am doing that, of course. But not just that. Because when I was power pawing through the bins of ribbon and lights and various geegaws that only see the light of day once a year, if that, I found this:

I don’t even know what it’s called. Ever since I received it as a Christmas present when I was eight years old, I’ve called it the candle-twirly thingie. My parents knew what I meant. The heat from the candles (I could only find one) rises and turns the windmill, and the little scenario turns round and round. Two of the windmill spokes have broken over the years. But I’ve hauled it around with me for thirty-five (gulp) years.

See, when I was a little kid, my Dad would tell me stories. Mom and I always said he should write them down, but he never did. These stories featured a little boy and a little girl and their adventures with a witch who lived in the woods. The witch was named Dame Dustinschniffin, and she had a cat named Hapsel. Every time Dame Dustinschniffen sneezed, which she did with great frequency due to terrible allergies combined with an almost OCD tendency to clean, her cat Hapsel changed colors.

That was the very simple structure in which dozens of tales were developed, first by my father alone, and then I joined in and helped to make up the stories. “What if…” he’d say, and off we’d go. “And then…and then…” It encouraged my imagination, but I had to keep to the rules of the world we’d created. The characters stayed the same, but they had understandable arcs as they learned new things in the course of their adventures.

It was my first series, and I loved it.

As for the candle-twirly thing in the picture. Christmas morning, eight-year-old me hurried out to the tree in my jammies, only to find this contraption. I had no idea how it functioned, but I immediately recognized the characters from our stories. My reaction was to demand where my parents had found such a thing.

Santa, I was told, with a grin and wink. It was very irritating. I was sure no one but my parents and I knew about Dame Dustinschniffen et al, and Santa was a myth. I bugged them for days. Did you have someone make it? Was it something you found that just happened to fit the characters? Did you make it yourself? Have you had it for a long time and made up the characters to fit the thingie?

To this day, they won’t tell me. I still wonder, and I still don’t have a clue. It’s a mystery.

Turns out I love mysteries, too.

Storytellers

by Candy Calvert

My suspicion is that, as writers, we were each exposed to a memorable storyteller at an early age, whether it was a parent, grandparent, teacher, neighbor, friend, TV personality. . . or whoever. There was someone, somewhere, who cast an incredible spell over us, had the ability to mesmerize with a word or a gesture . . . a delicious beckoning into that world of “What If?”

For me, it was my father, Orville Marley Bramble. And he had my rapt attention from my earliest recollections, because--boy howdy--the man could tell a story!
Some might have called them tall tales, fabrications of truth, even meanderings that bordered on the fringe of certifiable delusion. But for me, they were the purest form of entertainment. I would beg Dad to tell a story and he’d smile, purse his lips, and add a dramatic heavenward roll of his dark eyes, murmuring, “Hmmm . . . Well. Let. Me. See.” And then . . . the words would flow. Subject matter? Anything that caught his fancy: Magic Glow Worms. The Biggest Fish in Oak Lake. How A Dog Outsmarted The Super Flea. Space Ships in the Backyard. The Amazing Mr. Leaf. Anything was game, everything rolled off his tongue. And all were accompanied by wild arm gestures, the hiss of elongated S’s, and a maddening pause at the most critical . . . moments.

Those stories--those wonderful stories-- made every intermission at every drive-in movie, every long, carsick-inducing drive to the beach, every lights-out, stormy power failure . . . as enticing as freshly spun cotton candy.

Sunday is Father’s Day. I will be taking one last drive with my first storyteller--to a beach in Santa Cruz, California. Where, at his request, I’ll scatter his ashes in the ocean he loved to fish.
Dad's brave fight against cancer is over. And I'm glad that I was able to spend time with him toward the end. That I could tell him once more--as I did in the dedication of my very first Midnight Ink mystery--that he was “the supreme storyteller” in my life. To thank him, and to tell him that his imagination and energy will always inspire me.

My blog entry today, is in honor of my father. Thank you for indulging me.

Who was your most memorable storyteller?