Stories From Real Life

With the exception of my YA novel, I rarely take stories from my life. Life doesn't provide resolution or proper dramatic climaxes. Besides, real life is dull as dirt, unless you can at least name drop and share gossip about the private lives of interesting, powerful, famous wealthy, doomed people. My friends are interesting, but powerful, wealthy, and famous? No. Some of them may be famous one day. I hope to god none of them are doomed. Strangely enough though, both stories that are due by the end of the month I'm basing on real life events.*

* based on actual events means "might as well have been completely made up, because I reserve the right to change history to make a story interesting"

Candy Conversation Hearts quickly turns from the real to the surreal, and I doubt the writer that the story is based on would remember the reading that inspired me to write the story. (I, on the other hand, still fondly remember her perfect lips. I haven't seen her since then, but every time I see a picture of her, my heart flutters. Okay, that isn't my heart. Maybe a bit lower.)

The other story, the one I worked on today, sticks closer to reality, right until the part where it turns erotic. Frankly, being stranded out in the middle of the Mojave Desert at 2AM Christmas morning in icy rain when the temperature was hovering around freezing and the truck's heater was broken was about as erotic as, well, freezing my ass off in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere could be. (This was before cell phones. And did I mention the HUGE signs the State of Arizona so helpfully put up every 100 yards warning people NOT to pick up hitchhikers because there was a state penitentiary nearby and they didn't want prisoners to have help escaping?) So, as you can imagine, nothing about that night struck me as romantic or erotic then, or now. Except when the Marlboro Man in a rusty Chevy truck came to my rescue and saved me the four mile hike to the truck stop outside Quartzite. In real life, he drove away before I could thank him for the ride, so in the story, I'm going to make sure he gets thanked properly. And then improperly. Twice.