Literate Musca Domestica

Yesterday, after I got the outdoor chores done, I came inside to find Lisa’s nose buried in a draft of her sister Cathleen’s first novel.

Cathy is a wonderful writer and has read and brilliantly critiqued the drafts of my first two books as part of my early inner circle, before she embarked on this heavily researched storyline and storytelling. Indeed, Cathy was the one who suggested the mountaintop scene between Michele and Jimmy in AAA and that one of the major characters could not make it through the end of the story. Fittingly, Cathy’s husband, Beau (and his twin) is/are the basis for the tech twin terrors in KMAG.

I look forward to reading Cathy’s novel as soon as Lisa finishes it. Rumor has it that it draws deeply upon the family’s notorious maternal Spanish bloodline. Olé!

I seized the serendipitous sisterhood reading ambience as my opportunity to pick up where I had left off in the Ann McCaffrey biography. I popped myself in my favorite recliner, opened up the book, and was immediately set upon by the three young flies who normally keep me company in my basement office and who have decided to extend their NoCo life season into early November and the main floor of Casa Claire.

Two took up their normal spots playing tag on my pants leg.

I think I draw their immediate and relentless attention because of the remnants of the eau de mule shit fragrance that may have accompanied me indoors, and their well tested theory that I cannot bring myself to kill anything that cannot verbally (as opposed to psychically) suggest that I “fuck off.” .

But the third fly decided to investigate my reading material. It kept landing on different parts of the periphery of the book, shifting only when I turned a page. It finally moved right out onto the margins of the page and asked me to snap a photo.

Wouldn’t you know it, even the flies at Casa Claire are literate. Hem may have also shared my deep and literary association with Felis Catus via his Polydactyl clowder but he didn’t have flies who could engage in artful reading. It is safe to suggest that there were no flies on Pappa (at least, not when he was alive).

Speaking of flying creatures, along with my loose and completely contrived kitty connection to Hem, I was happy to find during my reading of Robin Robert’s elucidating book (whose brief selections I include with attribution) that I share a far stronger connection to my literary namesake and her dragons.

I learned that, along with sharing Ann’s outcast hypothetical trait of middle child syndrome,

https://psychcentral.com/health/middle-child-syndrome#syndrome-symptoms-stereotypes

I have unwittingly adopted my apocryphally distant cousin’s proclivity towards open accessibility to her readership,

and her rebelliously freewheeling issues with the “controlling censorious piety” of her childhood faith (Sorry Buck).

I also share Ann’s anthropomorphic tendency to treat the animals in my life as family and incorporate them into my storylines on equal (superior?) footing with the humans that appear.

So, it seems, that like Ann, I am genetically suited to the life of a Sci-Fi Fantasy Writer – and indeed, we are both members of the SFWA.

https://thewisenovelist.com/sfwa/

And after an elucidating afternoon of familial reading, and an early dinner of Berthoud’s famous “Eric’s” Chinese takeaway, I returned to the literary Papa Hemingway subject matter – and repeated visuals of a City I truly love – when I closed the evening watching – yet again – Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris, with Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams.

I so connect with the Gil Pender character, right down to his obsession with Ex-Pat Paris in the 20s and his fascination with curiosity shops.

But Sunday morning is upon me, and I must get a move on.

You fine, five readers will hopefully take advantage of the extra hour of sleep you have fallen back into.

Hopefully, you will get to honor the Creator’s day of rest. Get outside into the brisk autumn air and enjoy the day with family and friends.

Smokey was just calling for me from on top of the stairs so it’s time for some kitty cuddling and their breakfast. Then my rounds.

But no matter what else we get up to, let us make today a great one.