Let me explain, not for me, but because I’m a grandmother.

“No one reads my blogs, so you’re safe.”

“Oh, yeah they do. Many people do. I know this because they screenshot parts of them, and send them to me.” I over dramatically dropped my chin to my chest letting out a deep sigh before I eyed her apologetically.

“I’m sorry. I had no idea any one would do that.” I felt horrible that my daughter would be approached about anything I wrote. In my mind, people avoid reading altogether, and they absolutely avoid reading my blogs. I’m not a blog reader myself.

“It’s okay. They actually haven’t done that in a while.”

Let’s not start today. I spent the day cleaning out a room, getting it ready for grandbaby guests, because number three will arrive at the end of summer.

We have a lot of rooms in our house, but there’s a lot of stuff that occupies those rooms, so it’s time to clean house, literally.

My youngest daughter will be moving her things out of her room in May. She’s getting ready for her senior year of college, and her living situation will change. Without giving too much information, she’ll need the furniture in her room with the intention of taking it forever. I’ll have another room to redecorate. Exciting times, or I so I hope.

Now, why the follow up: in my last blog, I described the “Somewhere in the ’80s” as a coarse comedy. It absolutely is, but I didn’t make it up. The incidents came from a health club that my husband worked at in the eighties. All the members and his bosses, were the craziest people, and lived the most raunchy lives. The stories were so far-fetched, I couldn’t believe people actually lived lives the way these people did. I evidentally lived in a bubble, because as a writer, every story generates from somewhere.

Well, maybe not. Horror stories are completely made up, or morphed situations; imagination at it’s best?

As a grandmother, I don’t know if I’ll ever release those books again. I’d hate for the boys to ever read them and find out their grandmother wrote them! However, when I released them before, someone read the ’80s book, and they knew the characters I was writing about.

The person asked my husband, “Did your wife ever meet these people? She got them right.”

And the answer to that was no, I did not! I was just able to capture the characters on paper. Back then, I was writing all the time, so I could write laps, so to speak, with ease.

I quit writing for a good while and didn’t pick it up again until I decided it was foolish to have all of those books, and not try.

I’ll write one more, it will involve one of my children, and it will help a lot of people, but I have to wait for the thumbs up. It may never come, and if not; that’s okay.

My husband would say, “if you’re worried about what people think, you’re not ready. You need more time.”

I’m ready. I like what I’ve been able to construct. From time to time, I just need to explain the backstory because the fictional book is much more interesting when you know where it originated.

And it’s always fiction. Whatever I write is never exactly the way it happened.

Fridays Up the Hill by V. M. Jenkins