I’m often asked where do my ideas come from.

Truth is, they come from all over. A conversation with friends  (TANK), eaves dropping on customers at a coffee shop (my current work in progress, All The Sweet Reasons), or what I really like to do for ideas, peruse publishing websites to see what they are looking for. I use their “Want To See” lists as a way to come up with my own ideas, and then self publish them. Maybe that’s tacky. I don’t know…whatever works, right?

I’m just waiting on the day Hallmark decides to pick one of my story lines up for a made for TV movie. (Candace Cameron Bure, if you’re reading this, a little help, girl! Please!)

Bust as of late, because life has been a tad bit insane, as well all know, my muse has taken a slight backseat, so I must find her again. Oh, Shelia, where are you? So, I decided to start at least one day a week with a writing prompt to help the juices flow.

And then, lightbulb! Why not share those writing prompts with you? Maybe they’ll be a book one day. Maybe they’ll inspire you in some way, or maybe you can sit back and laugh at how bad they are. That’s cool. I love to make people laugh.

Couple of notes: This is not edited. This is not a full story. And I use XXX when I can’t think of a word. It helps me to keep going and stay in the moment. 

So without anymore intro, here is the first edition of Author Ramblings! 

Hidden away on the inside pocket of the jacket…

by Erin Bevan

Hidden away on the inside pocket of her father’s jacket was a letter. Not a letter really, but more like an encrypted note of sorts.

It was her mother’s handwriting. Nadine knew that curly ‘s’.

Stay home, the note said.

Not exactly a love letter, and too blunt to be from her mother. Olivia Sinclair was flowery, wordy if you will. What could have been said in three words, her mother used thirty. It was her XXX heritage she always said.  The gift of gab came naturally to her.

But, thankfully, Nadine had taken on more of her father’s traits. Think twice, speak once. Something the XXX were known for.

But ‘Stay Home’?

Why would her father keep a note like this from her mother?

In all her years growing up, Nadine never recalled her mother being so direct or bossy to her father, and more importantly why was such a simple note, two harmless words, causing her so much pause?

Nadine stuffed the note back in her father’s jacket pocket.

“Is that going in the pile, too?” Laura, Nadine’s long time best friend of twenty years, asked.

Laura had flown all the way from Louisiana to Charlotte to help Nadine empty the last of her parent’s possessions. In two days they’d sorted, piled, and set aside to sell or discard her parent’s fifty-years of marriage together.

Amazing how such hard work and savings for so long could be disposed of in less than a weekend.

“No.” Nadine pulled the jacket to her chest, breathing in the last lingering scent of her father’s XXX and XXX.

She cherished the memories she had of him wearing his best jacket to church, the same jacket he’d worn to walk her down the aisle in…twice. The jacket and her father had lasted longer than each of her husband’s.

“I’m going to keep this one.”

“Good choice.” Laura reached over and touched the sleeve of the coat, her friend’s eyes taking on their own gaze of longing as if she, too, remembered the man that wore the jacket. The man that had also attended Laura’s wedding in the same coat with Nadine’s mother by his side.

However, this coat brought her friend more luck, because Laura’s first husband still stared at her lovingly and adoringly.

Can’t win them all.

While Laura had her own family, loving parent’s, loving husband, and children, there had always been an unspoken agreement that Laura was apart of Nadine’s family also.

“Why do you think mom wrote this to dad?” Nadine reached for the letter again and showed Laura. “And more importantly, why do you think he kept it?”

Laura turned the letter over in her hand, searching the back as if there could be more hidden information on the other side.

“Huh?” Laura shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it was some sort of inside joke?”

“Maybe so.” Although she didn’t think so. While her parent’s were loving and kind, they weren’t jokers.

“How much more do you want to do this morning? I think we have the hall closet still and the upstairs attic. Want to knock out the closet before we break for lunch?”

Lunch. Food. She hadn’t eaten much more than a granola bar each day since her parent’s died two weeks ago. Maybe it was time to change that.

She hung her dad’s coat back up in his closet and turned off the light.

“Let’s go ahead and eat now. Whatever other secrets are awaiting us in this old house can keep for another hour.” Nadine closed the door to the closet and followed Laura out of her parent’s bedroom.

Stay home… What in the world did that mean?

***

Thanks for reading! Please note all my links in this post are affiliate links. There is no extra cost to you, and it helps me keep doing the thing I enjoy doing. 

Much love!

Erin