They say that good things come in threes. I'm waiting for the third good thing that's going to happen today, and wondering what it will turn out to be!
This morning UPS delivered two boxes of contributor's copies for the new Chicken Soup for the Soul series on healthier living, partnering with doctors from Harvard Medical School. Say Goodbye to Back Pain contains my story "Twist and Shout," about great advice I got from a nurse when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Belize. Say Hello to a Better Body includes "Running Like Sixty," about celebrating my sixtieth birthday running with the Hash House Harriers in Seychelles, where I'd remained to work for a couple of years after Peace Corps left there in 1995.
I'm particularly elated to see these stories in print. From 1987 to 1997 I lived overseas in four developing countries. A couple of stories about my adventures in the Dominican Republic and Guatemala previously have appeared, "Santo Domingo Sunrise" in The Ultimate Christian and "Once in a Lifetime" in A Bird in the Hand. But aside from a brief reference to Belize in "Watching for the Rebound," in The Ultimate Teacher, I haven't written much about my years there. And I've never had a story published about my experiences in Seychelles.
Actually, most of my sixty or seventy anthology stories feature less exotic settings. They're usually about my childhood or my son's, set in Southern California or Oregon, or about the years with my late husband, Ken Wilson, in Maryland and Washington State. So I'm delighted to be able to leaf through these new books and see that I've finally memorialized some of my moments during those wonderful years abroad.
Now I'm inspired to finish a couple of stories that still languish on my laptop. Poor little things, half dressed, shivering and cold, likely wondering when their creator will come back and hang some clothes on their bare bones. Maybe finishing one of those will be the third good healthy thing to happen today.
Or it might be that I'll begin a draft of an article, "Avoiding Adverbial Ataxia," which will allude to the Tom Swifties adverbial puns fad of the early '60s, for the May issue of Publishing Syndicate's WOW Principles newsletter. I'm never certain exactly what will happen when I adjourn to the back room and open the lid on my Toshiba.
"I must hurry," said Terri, swiftly.
"I wish I could see into the future," she added, blindly.
Posts
Wow! So you're up to 70 anthology stories now, Terri?! Fantastic! And even better that you're getting some stories about your overseas adventures published. Fun post, especially your last two lines. ;-)
ReplyDelete