I Need Your Opinions!

I am working on a writing project that just kind of jumped up and grabbed me. I have written different kinds of stuff over the years, but never really had the chance to really get anything out there. Oh I can write articles, no problem. I have even written a book which to date is unpublished, but maybe someday. But this project that has grabbed me is something different for me. It is untitled, and perhaps that too is something that could be suggested.

But my main reason to do this is simply to find out if I should just stick to articles, or really try to get this story published. Your opinions will either drive me along, or allow me to better concentrate my time and efforts into Camp Serenity, which if you have read my most recent Hubs, you are familiar with. (If you haven't, then what the heck are you waiting for?)

So, Bea came up with the idea to ask you all. So, I am.

So, anyway, here it is, (Well the first couple pages anyway.) Let us know what you think. Maybe it may even fund Camp Serenity! (Yah, right.)

Her father agreed to Briette becoming a part of his daughter's name, but at a price. He bargained with her mother, Angelica whose soft spoken ways simply masked the strength she held inside. None the less she agreed, pleased her daughter would at least carry her great grandmother's name, and in some way continue through life with the attachment to her French, Belgian heritage, mixed in with her father's French Creole blood.

Though the proper name Maurice had saddled his daughter with made Angelica shudder a bit every time she would hear it for she knew the original owner of the name and internally squashed the nausea and disdain she felt for the name and accepted her daughter's moniker being Brindle. The final stamp to the new birth certificate, with the date of June 6, 1946 made this beautiful baby girl's name, officially, Brindle Briette Dupree. The first born child of Maurice and Angelica Dupree. Adding to the population of Black Bayou, Louisiana, now a whopping fifty six.

Two years later, when Maurice's John Boat was discovered floating without Maurice, the population still hovered at fifty six. A week later, when Maurice's remains were found a quarter mile away, deeper into the bayou, where he had actually toppled from his boat into the water. The stories that followed were key in Angelica's decision to take Brindle away from that place. Despite all the stories and conjecture that people would toss about like folks in small places do out of lack of fresh incoming news, and out of boredom, Angelica knew the truth. She had been the one to identify the remains. She knew it was a gator that got him, and further she knew why. Maurice had always been a risk taker, and that he had probably cornered the animal and was knocked out of the boat by the gator's desperate charge in self defense. From there, she knew instinctively it was simply a matter of hunter becoming prey, and let her mind stop there blocking the gruesome details of being drug underwater in powerful, bone crushing jaws and being drowned and stuffed in an underwater tangle of mangrove roots to ripen for easier digestion.

But the truth can be so boring and lackluster. The truth is that, but it dose not allow for creativity nor imagination, for the truth is, where conjecture could be. The stories that flowed out of Black Bayou were far more creative than the truth ever could be, but they were so very much more damaging and damning than the truth could ever be, and seemed to begin to shroud their small corner of Louisiana in mystery, intrigue, and superstition.

Angelica had heard some of the talk. Her best friend since childhood, Maurice's sister Carmella had told her the story one morning over coffee, a month after Maurice's body had been discovered. She also knew deep inside that this was no surprise. She also knew that the stories were based on ancient history. Based on things that happened so many, many years before. Based on the history of Brindle's great grandmother, and her mysterious ways.

Some had called her a Gypsy. Others called her a doctor, of sorts. Others referred to her as a sorceress, while still others graced her with the title of witch. But the truth was she would be the first anyone would call on when a loved one was stricken ill, for all knew she would know what plants and herbs to gather that would make things right once again.

"My sweet Angelica," Her grandmother said softly as she wiped the tears from her granddaughter's face with her thumbs while holding her face gently between the palms of her hands. "people talk more of things they don't know than what they do. They are words, and just that. Close your ears to idle gossip, and hold them open for the truth instead."

She held onto those words of wisdom. They had been the last ones her grandmother shared with her, for that very night her breathing stopped shortly after climbing into bed. She had not felt well that day, and not long after Angelica had confessed that her tears were in connection to the word "witch" which was used to describe the woman who had taken the place of Angelica's own mother who died during Angelica's birth, her granmother's face and skin turned ashen in color.

Her father so deeply devastated by the tragedy of his wife's death never recovered, nor took any part of parental guidance in Angelica's upbringing, In fact he died when Angelica was only five. The stories began then too, some saying he had been hexed, while others said he had been slipped poison, or a witches brew as punishment for shirking his responsibilities as a father.

Again, the truth being so much less colorful, the stories won the competition for an explanation as to why his crumpled body had been found on road that led to the next town of Rogers. The truth was, he had downed a whole bottle of Wild-Turkey, passed out and was run over by Ben Lebuff's delivery truck in the early morning hours,just before the false dawn.

 In advance!