My first literary endeavor

Theric and Lady Steed have pestered me for years to finally get cracking on a novel. What they don't know is that I already started one.

When I was in the 6th grade (so, 12 years old) I decided to write a romance novel. A bodice ripper, to be specific, which was my new favorite genre. This is what happens when you send a voracious and not-yet-discriminating young reader off to babysit at the homes of people who read smut.

My novel opened with a scene lifted straight out of Gone with the Wind, which was another favorite at the time. I checked that thing out from the school library, no lie, eleven thousand times during the 5th and 6th grade. My heroine spent the first several pages trying to choose between ball gowns to wear to the big fancy ball that night. Descriptions of "apple-green, watered-silk" gowns lifted from GWTW as well.

Then, while taking a breather out on the back veranda of "Six Maples," a handkerchief with chloroform is pressed over our heroine's mouth and she passes out. She revives in a small shack, with her only companion the gray-eyed, strong-jawed, sardonic ruffian who has abducted her.

Aaaand . . . that's when I kind of ran out of steam. I wasn't really sure where to go from there, except I do remember that she called him a "cad" a couple of times. It seemed the thing to do. I couldn't decide why he kidnapped her, or how to still make him a good, kind, possibly-of-noble-birth guy when he's also a kidnapper. And I wasn't sure at what point in their relationship to start introducing the wild passion that must, surely, commence.

So it got abandoned at that point. And, afraid that my mother would come across it while demonstrating her love for me by cleaning my sty of a room, I threw it out.

Only now I'm quite sad about that. I wish I still had it, if only so that I could put it up here for all to enjoy.

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