I have realized a few things in the last couple of days.

1. I blog less now that I have internet at home, because now- if I have something to tell- I can hop online and call the people I most want to tell it to.   I need to blog about it, too.

2. My blog is Evie: Writer and Wanderer, but so far it’s been only about my wandering, and not about my writing.  I should fix that, as well.

3. It’s nearly impossible to explain what I’m writing without just letting people read what I’m writing.  I’ve tried.  It didn’t come close to getting the gist of it across.

Therefore, I decided to be brave and actually post some of what I’m working on.  I won’t post anything wholly- that would be silly, but I thought it might be fun to post at least the Intro to the novel that’s taking up the most of my time.  That being said, let me explain it a little bit before I paste it in here.  First off, I am writing several things simultaneously, because I get bored if I only work on one story at a time.  Sometimes I need a mental break, so I’ll go work on something else for a bit.  Secondly, most of what I’m writing is very loosely based on reality but told in a big-fish story kind of way (I hope).  The story I’m most focused on is “Good Ol’ Boys, Kingpins, and Other Sticky Situations.”  If you know me and my family personally, the title of this novel will probably make you laugh, because you know the true tale behind it.  If you don’t know, well, maybe one day I’ll write the true tale and you can buy that at Borders, yes?  So, here goes.

Good Ol’ Boys, Kingpins, and Other Sticky Situations

Introduction

Have you ever met a true Southern good ol’ boy?  Not sure?  Well, trust me you’d know if you had.  No doubt about it.  They’re light hearted, fun loving, free as air, hard headed, hard working- once they realize they can’t make a living on cane fishin’ and deer huntin’- and as ornery as cussing on Sunday.  For all that this might sound funny to you, just try growing up a girl calling one of these ol’ boys “daddy” and see how you feel.  On the surface it looks like Daddy’s a hard working, God fearing, sun burnt, Southern cracker, but the honest truth is that at heart every good ol’ boy has an imaginative, dreaming streak a mile wide.

It’s this muddy water of fanciful thought that gets most ol’ boys into a whole heap of trouble a lot of the time, and it’s hard to say who ends up bailing them out more often- Mama, or one of their own baby girls.  I’ve been one of those baby girls my whole life.  Truth be told, a long time ago I started to think my daddy was a curse on me from the god of stepped-on-nails and stale-smoke-smell, but that never kept me from bailing Daddy out of a bind!  It’s just what baby girls do, ‘cause good ol’ boy daddies aren’t always the wisest bunch, but baby girls sure are.

I wasn’t daddy’s only baby girl, of course.  I was one of five, and you’d think a man with five daughters and not a son in sight would get smart about life.  But not my daddy- he was a dreamer, a schemer, and one sore loser when things didn’t go his way.  Having nothing but five daughters was one of those things that did not go his way.  Every man wants a son, and my daddy was no exception.  So, instead of a son, he had me, daughter number three, and I don’t mind saying I think that did him more good.  Why he decided I’d be his tomboy, I don’t know, but he started from day one dragging me around with him every where he and his good ol’ boy buddies went.  I learned the fine arts of beer drinking and drunken midnight fishing before I could read, and I learned all about what men do when they’re just being “boys.”  I could spit like a pro, tell lewd jokes, and stand to pee just like any boy could do, and I wasn’t ashamed of it.  That was strike one against me as far as the kids I grew up with were concerned.

Strike two was my name.  Peach.  That’s right, Peach.  It says it right on my birth certificate- Peach Marie O’Roy.  I guess Daddy thought it fit- Olive, Heather, Laurel, Juniper, and Peach- but I can’t figure out why I, daughter number three, got stuck with it.  I could maybe understand if it was a last-kid, ran-out-of-ideas kind of name, but Juniper and Olive are after me!  Of course, since I had gotten stuck with Peach, my all time least treasured nickname was Pea.  Like Sweet Pea, or Sugar Pea, or if I was at school- Pee. P-E-E.  Yeah, you got it.  I was, “Hey Pee, looks like your hair’s turning yellow!  That name must be rubbing off!”  I was, “Hey Pee, don’t eat the yellow snow,” like there’s snow down south.  I was, “Ewww!  There’s Pee in the pool/gym/classroom!” and “Don’t you come to my slumber party, I don’t want Pee in my bed,” was a personal favorite of mine.  Add the name to the fact that Daddy thought I was the next-best thing to a boy, and you can imagine the kind of fights I got into!  Spectacular, nose-spouting-blood kind of fights with boys, and silly she-ran-away-screaming fights with girls too stupid to realize I didn’t pull hair and sissy slap when they pissed me off.

Those fights did me a world of good, though, when it came time to bail my daddy out of one bind or another.  Truth is, I was a darn sight better at taking care of myself by the time I was nine-years-old than most of the adults I’ve met my entire life.  I was tough, too, and knew darn well how to set aside any scrap of fear and just go in swinging, no matter what I was up against.  I’ve never really unlearned that lesson, either.  May be that’s why I’m still not married.  May be that’s why I make the kind of money I make, too- more than most men in a South that still thinks women maybe ought to stay at home more.  May be that’s why my four sisters- and their husbands- still come to me for help when there’s something going wrong.  But it’s for sure the reason my good ol’ boy daddy didn’t get skinned alive half a dozen times before I got all grown up.