Twilight Fireflies

I walked out into the yard this evening with my family and watched the shadows darken beneath the trees as my twenty-one month old son danced in grass still wet from the afternoon rain.  Our eleven year old daughter ran through the yard in a cat mask, a string for a tail, catching fireflies and letting them go.  I watched the little black dots vanish into the darker shades behind, then blink like shooting stars for our amusement. The geese grumbled by the henhouse, and the goats stood watching us watch the show, stiocally chewing their afternoon forage.

In moments like that, a writer finds all he or she needs to build a world.

HUSH began on just such a walk through the yard in mid-2008.  My son was still a discussion, but the honeysuckle was in glorious bloom, and the sun and the breeze and our daughter playing were enough to inspire my wife.  She imagined a simple vignette, a dusty, well armed cowgirl-soldier sitting her horse to watch over the children at play.  A Catcher in the Rye, quiet and tired but ready to do battle for the welfare of her charges.  Everything else grew out of that moment.

Even if it never makes a dime, an eventuality I find hard to believe, though it's always possible - even then, it will have been worth it. I am a better person for having read the tale that she started, that we finished and polished together. May my own ideas bear that sort of fruit.