Alas, I didn't get any prompts for my first foray into a children's book from my yesterday post. So after a busy day of cheering for my favorite drivers in the Daytona 500 (both lost but both lead for a while during the race) ant then I helping my wife muck out a storage closet at her work, I turned it over to my muse to give me some help. I prayed for a beginning before going to bed and Mary picked up on some of the ideas that I thought would be good from my responses. Overnight, Mary gave me a great idea using those wonderful ideas from my friends.
The heroine is going to be Magdalena 9 year old daughter of one of the protagonists from detective series, Johnson-Ingram Detectives. It is going to cover four primary issues: apathy, assuming guilt without facts, bullying, and parental abuse. These are all issues that children face on a regular basis. We all know who the playground bully is in our lives. We all fail to act on what we know; sometimes from the fear of reprisal. I think we have all been guilty of assigning guilt before all the evidence is in and processed. We all know that parental abuse occurs; but we are afraid to get involved or we don't think it's our place to get involved.
These are universal in scope and not just relegated to children issues. We learn by what we see growing up. We also learn by what our friends go through and sometimes we don't ask our friends what is going on in their lives. I had friends growing up who would always come to school bruises, a cut, a broken bone. I never associated that with home life, as my parents only violence against us as children was an occasional spanking (that in hind sight was not a bad thing). It never occurred to me that home was not a safe place to be.
For my book purposes, I completed the prologue this morning after reading the newspaper, and over a cup of coffee. I heard a door slamming and it prompted an idea and I started writing. I wrote; and then wrote some more. The words just kept flowing from Mary my muse to my arm to my hand and finally to the flow of the ink in my journal. I had trouble keeping up with the flood of words. The prologue is a kid hearing a drunk parent coming home from a night out with friends. It is his perspective of what he as a child of an abusive parent goes through. My wife and I have volunteered at a domestic violence shelter and listening to the children stories are burned in my memory forever and ever. I just hope there is never an Amen to those stories. I already have Chapter 01 racing through the synapses of my brain fleshing out the words and how to get the heroine involved in her friends tragic home life and the trials she goes through. Luckily her father is Bob Johnson, college English professor and partner in the Johnson-Ingram Consulting Group. Johnson-Ingram is really a detective agency and crime consulting group that has world wide scope.
Ah, for the adventures my mind take me on without having to leave home!
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