The below excerpt is from my current work in progress (W.I.P.). I’m not sure if it will stay in the final version of the novel but am sharing it today because it’s related to one of the daily writing prompts from this past week. Somehow I worked what I wrote for the writing prompt into my current novel. Have you ever done that before?
Summertime scene from my current W.I.P
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As I place the coffee pod in the machine my mind wanders to my most vivid and recent memory of Uncle Aster, from nearly fifteen years ago.
I was around fourteen. It was summertime. The entire family, on my mom’s side of the family, was at the old cabin by the lake in Tennessee. It was a small cabin for a small family. There were never more than ten or fifteen of us there. And we would have all been packed inside it like sardines in a can if it hadn’t been for the enormous screened-in, wrap-around porch we kids slept on every night.
I can still smell the summer nighttime air there as I think about it– crisp, damp, and earthy.
Uncle Aster had herded me, my brother, and Penelope, down to the dock on the lake to fish every day this particular summer. We all had fishing poles and bad attitudes because he had forced us to leave our phones behind. He had insisted that the phones scared the fish and that we’d have no dinner if we brought them with us. “Besides, fish take terrible selfies,” he had said with a grin, as we all rolled our adolescent eyes at his lame dad joke.
He had been insistent that we all learn how to survive off the land that summer.
The summers prior to this one, we had hiked to the nearby waterfall, canoed on the lake, and hung around eating and playing board games. And not much else, to our dismay. But this particular summer, Uncle Aster was on a mission. He even made binders for each of us with maps and lists of wildlife and plants to be aware of around the cabin. It was odd, sure. But not necessarily odd for Uncle Aster, who regularly became narrowminded and obsessive when focused on whatever project he was working on at any given moment. It was an obnoxious quality that had led to his infamy.
Carson came into the kitchen, interrupting my memory.
…
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