Introducing Lettie

I hate saying, out loud, that I am going to do a thing then finding the thing six months later at the bottom of a teetering stack of papers on the back of my desk.

However.

I want to write a novel. Not because there aren’t novels in the world, but because I consume novels like loaves of Southern Sourdough bread. Those jokers don’t make it through the weekend. If you don’t know what that is, just imagine the sweet tea version of bread. There is nothing better on Earth than Southern Sourdough bread toasted with salted butter. Prove me wrong. Anyway, I love novels. I love floating through my imagination looking for the next thread of the story, and I would love to try doing so in long-form.

Thursdays (hopefully) are for novel writing. Obviously, I can’t sit and write a novel each Thursday, but I am hoping to do character sketches, scene work, plot brainstorming. You know…writing.

So, I would like for you to meet Lettie.

She is elderly—do better, Andrea! She is 79 years old. She wears thin cotton day gowns and those little slippers that look like low socks but are shiny. She lives in a one story house with a concrete patio out back. The sagging plastic strap furniture is never quite straight. It is always mid conversation. The patio is the dark grey of dirty concrete.

Lettie loves to pry. She is a gossipy busybody, but she is also a tender, fierce soul who will march down to the elementary school and wag her finger if she catches a whisper that of one of “hers” (kids living nearby) has been giving or getting trouble.

She is standing on her front stoop looking down the street after a car that has just driven by so fast that the thready plants by the mailbox quivered.

Bummer…there goes the kids’ alarm. We will have to pick up later.