Archive for the 'Blast From The Past' Category

Blast From The Past: Childhood Story “The Mysterious Relatives”

Published on November 3, 2010 in Blast From The Past. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

I found this short story from my childhood tucked away in a bright yellow folder, written in my careful script. I was probably about 11 when I wrote it. I hadn’t read it in years and expected to discover that The Mysterious Relatives was one of my Cathy Summers mysteries. As I flipped through it, though, I realized that it was actually a standalone about a young amateur sleuth named Amanda.

Here’s the opener: Amanda Ford, a willowy strawberry blonde quite tall for the tender age of fourteen, watched as her good friend Lavinia Blake, having aroused her curiosity, placed a small square of creamy butter and a spoonful of raspberry jam atop a golden slice of toast.

Lavinia wolfed down the snack hungrily and raised a clear crystal glass filled to the rim with thirst-quenching orange juice to her cherry red lips.

“What does your mother do? Starve you?” giggled Amanda, better known as Mandy.

Lavinia smiled also. “No, but she has us all on some new diet plan that her doctor recommended to her. Salad minus the dressing for dinner every night with a side dish of white bread.”

Mandy made a face. “Ugh! My mom sees to it that we have a full, three course dinner all-“

Lavinia shushed her pretty companion quietly and pointed an accusing finger at the front door. “Someone has been listening,” she confided in a whisper.

“Can’t be,” Mandy replied, shrugging the matter off as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “There isn’t anybody here but us.”

“Don’t you have a brother and two sisters? Mightn’t it be one of them?”

“I doubt it. Honey and Grace are taking their ballet lessons – Honey is wearing the cutest silk, rose frock…and…so what if there was somebody eavesdropping? We were only talking about your favorite subject – food.”

Lavinia mulled this over for a brief moment. Finally, she said, her wide hazel eyes widening even more in horror, “It…may have been a prowler. Maybe even an international spy wanted by the FBI.”
***
Did all the talk about food make you hungry? In case you’re wondering, Lavinia was right, a mysterious man was eavesdropping and ran off the property when chased.

Meanwhile, Mandy’s long lost cousin suddenly show up in trouble. It’s funny, I really have no memory of writing this story, but it is 33 pages so it must have taken me awhile. Check out some of my other excerpts:

The Mystery of the Stolen Art Treasure
The Fairview Treasure

Blast From The Past: The Fairview Treasure

Published on August 6, 2010 in Blast From The Past. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Here’s another one of my childhood writing excerpts. I can barely decipher my handwriting on this 25-year-old fifth grade writing assignment as I wrote it in pencil. I remember writing this story, which I titled The Fairview Treasure. Back then, I was reading a lot of Phyllis A. Whitney books, as well as the Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Cherry Ames, Bobbsey Twins, and Judy Bolton series.

Here’s an excerpt: One dark and gloomy night, as the coyotes that were hidden from the atmosphere of the Fairview Boarding School For Girls were howling loudly, two young girls of about twelve years old were walking nervously on the dirt trails that led down to Fairview Beach.

One child’s name was Linda. She was tall with long, thick curly black hair that hung down to her shoulders. She had wide hazel eyes and a creamy complexion. Her companion, Lucy, had beautiful long strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes.

“Linda,” Lucy asked suspiciously, “why have you suddenly decided that your great-great grandfather was murdered?”

“Well, when I asked you to come with me to his old mansion, I guess I forgot to fill you in on the details of the story. I’ll tell you the answer to the question you just asked me when I finish telling it.”

“Tell me when we get to the mansion, Linda,” Lucy pleaded. “The lights in our room at Fairview just turned on. I guess they just realized we were missing.”

“Already? Come on.”

“Linda, after you finally got me to promise I’d come with you, you mentioned something about not knowing where this mansion was.”

“Don’t worry. I have a map with me now. I forgot all about it until I found it in a secret compartment in my jewelry box. My mother put it there before she died and sent me to boarding school.”

“Why did she put it in a jewelry box?”

“It used to be hers. The map is very valuable and the secret compartment seemed to be a good place.”

***
Okay, I’ll admit this story was a bit heavy on the dialogue and didn’t have much description – well, other than the coyotes hanging around the boarding school. What kind of supervision did these students have, anyway???

I also didn’t know back then that authors should never have the names of two main characters start with the same letter – it’s rather hard for readers to distinguish between Linda and Lucy. It was a fun story to write, though. The girls found the Fairview treasure, but didn’t gather all of the answers they were seeking from decades past. I love the last two lines of the story: “It was best left an old mystery. But maybe someone can solve it. Can you?”

Hmm, do you think I could have gotten away with that ending in Twenty-Five Years Ago Today?

Blast From The Past: Mystery of the Stolen Art Treasure

Published on July 22, 2010 in Blast From The Past. 5 Comments

As I mentioned earlier in my blog, I’ve been writing mystery stories since I was in elementary school. I store them all in a huge clear plastic bin in one of my closets. I stumbled across this one, The Mystery of the Stolen Art Treasure, in a light blue folder. I wrote it in careful handwriting, with a blue erasable pen. If I made too many mistakes in one of my stories, I’d force myself to recopy the entire page until it was perfect. Boy, did I hate recopying pages, but I was tough editor, even as an 11 year old.

Although this manuscript has a few erase marks here and there, apparently I gave myself a break and allowed it to pass as “final.” Here is an excerpt of the beginning:

“Carolyn, it’s time to leave now, darling. We’ll be late if you don’t hurry.”

“I’m coming, Mom. Wait a second…”

“Carolyn, come on,” another voice cut in impatiently.

“I’m almost ready.”

Carolyn Gordon was a lovely girl of about eleven years of age. Long flowing brown hair framed her oval face and her pink monogrammed sweater and red knit skirt set off her twinkling blue eyes.

Gloria, Carolyn’s older sister, burst red-faced into the room. “Carolyn, if you don’t hurry, then it will be Christmas by the time we get to the carnival.”

“My, aren’t we impatient today,” Carolyn laughed. “But don’t worry, I’m ready now.”

“Finally. Honestly, I was just about to ask Mom to leave without you.”

“Well, I wouldn’t leave without Carolyn,” Jeannie, their six-year-old sister, announced stoutly, coming into the room.

Obviously, as a child writer, I hadn’t mastered the technique of jumping right into the action. I took my sweet old time introducing the characters. Around page five, the main character, Carolyn, learns that her friend can’t join her at the carnival as a family art treasure was just stolen. That’s probably where the story should have begun, but heck, I was eleven. The excerpt does demonstrate my fondness for writing dialogue and short descriptions. From time-to-time, I’ll share other excerpts from my childhood stories.

Writers, feel free to tell us about your own childhood writing in the comments. And if you can hunt down an actual excerpt to share, let me know so we can feature it sometime!

25 Years Ago Today: Journey of an Aspiring Mystery Writer

Published on July 11, 2010 in 25 Years Ago Today and Blast From The Past. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Twenty-five years ago, I was an 11–year-old bookworm who loved writing stories as much as reading them. My characters immersed themselves in tales like Mystery of the Stone Castle, Mystery at the Skating Rink, The Secret of the Sea Falcon, A Ghost at the Beach, Hidden Treasure, The Mysterious Relatives, and the Mysterious Bank Robbery. I wrote standalones, as well as a series featuring teenage amateur sleuth Cathy Summers and her sidekick Katie.

I wrote a lot about young psychics also, which is interesting as my two books-in-the-works both feature psychic characters.

Just for fun, now and then I’ll post excerpts from some of these old stories on my blog. I thought it would be fun to dig into these stories and see the similarities and differences to my adult writing style. I’m also doing it as a reminder to nurture your children’s talents and interests, as my parents did, and help steer them down the right path. There is a wonderful book called A Walk With Daimon, by Peter K. Delani, which describes the importance of following the right path.

Be sure to nurture your own inner child as well. If you liked painting, writing, music, or drawing as a child and have given it up due to time constraints, that part of you is still buried somewhere inside you. Let it come out to play.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...