Back Home to the Tales from Vowella

I was so excited I could hardly stand it. After years of writing, rewriting, side trips to unexpected places, and necessary bends in the road, I was actually ready to pull down my original manuscript about Heaven's Wait and its oddball residents, the Vowellans, from its dusty perch on top of my office bookcase. As I grabbed the bulky stack of papers, the brittle rubber band that had kept it intact disintegrated in my hands. The swirling dust that marked the manuscript's long stay on the case filled my head and made me cough. The gray-tinged sheet of red paper that topped the pile made me smile, because I knew that beneath its protective watch, my core characters were itching to remind me of their tales of life in present-day Heaven's Wait.

How had I let so many years slip by without visiting them once in a while? What had I been thinking? I hadn't been thinking . . . well, yes I had, but not about them. I had been inventing their ancestors, their history, and their back-story with R.J. I had been working toward this point in time, when the greater collection of Tales from Vowella could be rewritten in a more meaningful way, and now I was here.

I flipped through the many tales from which the manuscript was comprised, pausing now and then as my favorite characters called to me from their scenes. They were as I had left them: endearing, peculiar, and littered with gobs of red marks from my original story consultation so many years before. The stories were aching to be edited, improved upon, and offered to the world, just as R.J.'s Story had been.

I was about to delve into a whole new chapter of my unexpected journey, and I looked forward to reuniting with my characters and telling the many stories that were waiting to emerge from the land of Heaven's Wait that continues to live inside my head.