Story Time with Tea

Anna gave me a very special tea mug for Christmas.

The bottom part is like a mini-chalk board, and the mug comes with two colored pencils that write on it. Before she returned to Japan she wrote me a last note on my mug. Now I have to figure out how to use the mug without ever washing the message off :)
Peter and Shani gave me some delicious tea for Christmas. Here are the three canisters on my windowsill:

Aren't they pretty? The center one is Earl Grey and the ones on either side are varieties of chai -- my absolute favorite! It's a gorgeous tea.

The canisters are sturdy and come with plastic sealing inner lids. I will be using them to store tea when I'm 85 years old because I never, ever throw gifts away.

So I'm sipping some very sweet, very creamy hot chai and enjoying some youtube videos of adorable twin girls, Ava and Alexis McClure.

However, I told you this is story time, and it is. This is the best creativity that's been happening in the house (for me, anyway) lately. I'm once again writing a story. I wrote Three Against the Dark quite a few years ago. Anna and Peter were in about 2nd and 3rd grades. I edited it (although I was never quite happy with it), and Adam formatted it, and it's been for sale on Amazon for several years now. I forget when I actually published it ... 2012? 2013? Something like that. (I really ought to know.)

I've tried several times to write a sequel, without success. I've tried to write other stories, with some success. But the characters (the children) from that novel are still in my head, sitting there, bored, waiting for me to do something with their lives. They're nagging me. The story -- the idea -- is nagging me. And at last it appears something might be happening. I'm now in chapter four of the new book, the sequel to Three Against the Dark. I'm not confused and frustrated in the writing. I'm not in a fog. It's clipping right along and things seem to be falling into place. Perhaps it was all those years of ruminating, pondering, and false starts.

What's most fun is that Julia still likes to be read to, and she wants each chapter read aloud to her as I finish it, just like all those years ago. She sees Three Against the Dark as the story of her childhood (among others), and she is excited to hear about those kids again and find out what happens next. This is quite satisfying. I'm not sure how I would write if I didn't have some child to read it to.

I'll let you know when the story's finished. The editing, formatting, and publishing process is rather long. If Adam didn't do the online formatting for me, my stories would stay right here on my laptop. Now I must go finish chapter four and find out what happens in the middle of the night with Carla and her cousin.