Gems Hidden in Plain Sight

In cleaning out papers that have accumulated over the years, I began reading some pages of a little calendar containing information about various topics, fodder for a writer, one page for each day. Here’s a real jewel. Perhaps you knew this already, but I did not. The inner city of Amsterdam, Netherlands, is divided by a network of canals into some 90 “islands.” The municipality contains approximately 1,300 bridges and viaducts. This locale needs a James Patterson or a Daniel Silva or a Frederick Forsyte to commit murder and intrigue there. I suppose someone has accomplished this already, perhaps several of them, but I just don’t recall reading a story with this setting. If anyone knows of such a mystery set there, please let me know. A mystery in English, I mean, not Dutch.

Another touching comment has come in, about a blog I posted on February 17, 2010. This is from the second stranger who had read the book I wrote about, and read ever so many years ago, Yours Is the Earth by Margaret Vail. Each one was pleased I had the rest of the story for them, such as, if Margaret ever got her husband back from a German prison camp in World War II. Each time I was thrilled the answer to their question was right here in my blog. And that reminds me of something else:

To those who asked about the book, Deanna and Len, let me tell you I recently completed writing a short story with a WWII time period for a contest submission this year in Idaho Writers League. I had read two wonderful books, one right after the other, and then flew to my computer to begin that story, for one of them especially gave facts new to me, that begged to be details in my fiction. I may add it to my blog, for its only publication elsewhere, I intend, will be in the book of short stories I hope to get off the press someday. It won’t be going to a magazine. I think it has a chance of placing in the contests, though one must be ready for surprises in that regard. Whether it does or not, I will print it for you after the conference has announced the awards in late September.

The two books that spurred me to write “To Save a Bridge” were Joanne Harris’s Five Quarters of the Orange (fiction) and Don and Petie Kladstrup’s Wine and War (nonfiction). You might enjoy reading these and weighing my story against them. Quarters gave me mostly atmosphere and Wine gave me facts. While giving away books, these are two I don’t let go. Enjoy them. And thank you for your comments.

♥