Dreaming of the Perfect Writing Tool

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By Barbara J Eikmeier

I wrote an entire novel in my dreams the other night. It was a suspense thriller with a mysterious murderous. The plot was riveting and the characters vivid in my dream world imagination.

When I woke, I knew I’d dreamt a novel but didn’t remember a single detail. How frustrating is that?

Whenever I have a clever idea for a story, I make notes. If it’s for a current project I prefer 3 x 5 cards, a holdover from my college days where I learned to write nursing care plans on little cards. In novel writing I use them for scenes – it’s easy to shuffle them around as the narrative is coming together. And I’m a big fan of spiral notebooks, although it’s sometimes hard to find my notes when I need them, and it takes extra time rewriting as I type into the computer. If only there was a tool that would convert my hand written notes to digital text.

I went so far as to buy a second hand gadget without really understanding what I was buying. (Oh the woes of buying second hand!) It had a small tablet sized screen and an electronic pen. Surely, it would work. I asked my techno-savvy daughter to teach me how to use it. Alas, it was a graphic design tool, not intended for text at all. A graphic designer herself, my daughter happily took it off my hands.

Like most writers, I conduct informal research in airports. I’ve observed the introduction of all sorts of gadgets by watching what people are using on flights. Do you remember the short lived series of Samsung phones that were the size of an Ipad? The only place I ever saw anyone use that phone was on an airplane. Then there was that time I thought a lady had left her dental floss on the seat. Her visual relief at noticing the small white case seemed out of proportion for dental floss. Come to find out they were $100 ear buds, common place now, but cutting edge at the time.

On a flight a few months ago I saw a businessman using a slim notebook sized gadget with an electronic pen. When I ran into him in the terminal during a connection I asked him about it. He gave me the name, along with a glowing review. Then he surprised me by pulling it out of his carry-on and showing me a few pages during a 3 second tutorial. I wrote ReMarkable 2 in my spiral bound notebook and proceeded to my next gate where I jumped on the internet and looked it up. 5 Star Reviews across the board. I sent a text to my daughter who replied instantly, “I’ve heard it’s good.”

Using a bit of mad money I had stashed away, I order the ReMarkable 2. I’ve had it for about three weeks now. I’m still learning which features are best for me, but so far I’m loving it.

Is this the tool that will replace my towering stack of 49 cent spiral notebooks? Will it clear my kitchen counter of endless to-do lists? After all, I can still handwrite those beloved lists on its opaque paper like surface. Will the text conversion work well enough for me to cut and paste into a manuscript or in Skrivner, finally breaking me of a decades old habit of using 3 x 5 cards?

I think the answer is yes, it will do all those things. What it won’t do is capture that complete novel from my dreams.

Do you use a digital notepad? Has it increased your productivity?

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

The Classic Camel Coat

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I gave away my winter coat. It was a long wool coat with generous sleeves, easy to fit over a bulky sweater or blazer. It was a classic style: Notched collar, button front, buttoned bands at the sleeves. It was camel colored. The same color as my dog. Some would call this coat ageless – my mother had one in the 60s. Hers was mohair. Mine was wool.

Having left my job in the business world, I no longer wore my classic camel coat, opting instead for a pack-able down number that I can stuff into my purse when needed. I donated my old coat during the winter coat drive last fall.

I bought the camel coat in 1995 to match our new dog, Millie, a golden retriever mix who shed year-round. My favorite long wool red coat was a magnet for her fur. The camel coat collected her fur too, it just didn’t’ show.

The coat served me well, but I never really loved the color. Tan, in general, washes me out. I prefer a red coat, or purple, or navy, or black – anything other than tan.

Years passed, jobs changed, my husband retired from the military and we stopped moving. It was time for a closet purge. I stripped hangers of glittery formal wear saved for the next military ball. I unclipped my skirt and jacket suits, brushed the dust off the shoulders, catching a whiff of the cologne I used to wear to work at my office job – it seemed like a lifetime ago.

I worked my way to the coats. I pulled two leather jackets, bought for a song when we lived in South Korea, excess raincoats, bought when caught in the rain while traveling, and hip length ‘tween season jackets. The last coat to go into the donation bag was my classic camel coat. I held it up to my body and looked in the mirror. Even though my skin has grown fairer as I’ve aged and my formerly dark brown hair has lightened with streaks of grey, camel still isn’t my color. Into the bag it went.

There were no second thoughts as I pulled the yellow tie cinching the plastic bag closed just as my husband came in. Patting the bag I said, “These can go to the coat drive.”

End of story, right?

Purges are often hard for me. I spent 26 years as a military wife moving every 2-3 years. With each move I gave up neighbors, houses, gardens, and social groups. I lost my dentist, hairdresser, and church community replacing them with new people at the next location. But I had my stuff.

The items I collected were familiar to me in their new surroundings. They helped make my new house feel like home. I became a maximalist collecting anything I loved, saving cards, letters, and love notes, acquiring twenty-eight chairs (the guy from the moving company told me he counted them!) I saved curtains and area rugs – one never knew when they might work in the next house. And I saved coats – after all, we lived in a variety of climates.

Millie, the camel-colored dog, passed away many years ago. I no longer find her fur on my sofa or in my car. I hadn’t worn my classic camel coat in 15 years. It was time to pass it on.

No regrets, right?

Well, no immediate regrets anyway, until I attended a nephew’s wedding on a cold day in January. I watched two young women come into the church together. They were the spouses of two of my other nephews who were groomsmen.

I enjoy being around 20 somethings. It’s fun to notice the styles they wear and hear the language they use. That day both women where dressed in tea length floral dresses. Trendy, I thought. Over their pretty dresses they were both wearing coats. Classic camel coats.What? Wait a minute – is the classic camel coat popular with young women? Did I give away my coat 2 months too soon? I felt a twinge of regret.

The January wedding was the beginning of an informal study. I began seeing classic camel coats everywhere! I saw young women in airports, bookstores, at the grocery market, even at the gas station wearing classic camel coats. The styling didn’t differ much from coat to coat although the length varied from hip length to mid-calf (like mine). One thing was certain, the classic camel coat was trending.

A few weeks ago, when a frigid polar vortex hung over Kansas, I thought about my donated coat. I’m always hopeful that my donated coats are keeping someone warm, but this year was different. I hoped that my coat was snatched up by a young woman on a budget, delighted in finding such a stylish coat.

I’m over the regret. At least I think I am, until I counted five sightings in one hour at the Kansas City Airport this morning.

Do you own a classic camel coat? If so, did you know you’re trending?

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

The Places We Go

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By Barbara J Eikmeier

One of my favorite things about reading is “going to new places” when the setting in the story takes me away. Sometimes I unintentionally read several books set in similar places, such as WW2 Europe. Or, I end up reading books where the setting is either not well developed or not important to the story. Recent book choices have taken me far away to unique environments. For example,  Lucy Foley places her creepy stories in creepy places like remote Irish islands or desolate lodges in the Scottish Highlands. David Baldacci put his newest FBI superstar in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The unusual settings made for interesting reading.

This past summer I hit a “great setting” jackpot with three books in a row with settings that quickly took me into the story and kept me there for the duration.

Before We Were Yours, by Lisa Wingate (2022) is the tragic tale of orphans under the care of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in the 1930s. The story alternates between present day South Carolina and in the past near Memphis, TN. The protagonist in the past lived with her family on the Arcadia, a shanty river boat.

As I read Wingate’s words I felt the sun and heard the sparrows sing and saw the “fat bass” jump out of the water. She paints a picture of white pelicans flying over, headed north, indicating that summer has just begun. Later in the orphanage May gets her hands on a copy of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn which makes her long for her home on the river.

The story isn’t about the river so much as it is the people who lived on that shanty boat, but the setting of the river is so beautifully developed that it has stayed with me long past the horror of the orphanage and the final pages of the novel.

One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow by Olivia Hawker (2019) is set in the shadow of the Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming in 1878. This book captivated me at page one. My mother lived until age 14 on a homestead in Wyoming so novels set there pique my interest. Twenty miles from town is not hard to imagine if you’ve ever driven across the Wyoming plains.

The story meanders along and although there are some great climatic moments it is the way the young couple work in harmony in the every day setting of their homestead just to survive that kept me reading. Young Beaulah, ‘a little light in the head’ is fascinated with all aspects of nature and I never tired of her teaching Clyde to notice the neat rows of seeds in a pod, or the shimmer on a bug’s wings or how the river sounds and the grass swishes.

I said to my sister-in-law, who loaned me the book, “That story isn’t in a hurry to get anywhere, and surprisingly, it doesn’t bother me. I sort of don’t want it to end.” Rich in sensory detail I now want to visit the Big Horn Mountains myself.

Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls (2023) is set in the hollers of Virginia in the 1920s. Walls masterful storytelling places young Sallie Kincaid in charge of collecting rent from residents of the county, most of whom live up in the hollers. The story touches on many social topics, is filled with rich characters and plenty of tragedy all placed in a specific setting in rural Claiborne County of Virginia..  The setting is so well described that when the bootleggers turn their headlights off and move through the county under moonlit it’s as if we can see as well as the drivers.

I read every night before going to sleep. It often takes me 2-3 weeks to finish an average length novel but I flew through these books and I’m hoping the next one I pick up will have just as rich a setting as these past three.

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

Sunrise, Sunset

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By Barbara J. Eikmeier

I once read that for health and prosperity a person should strive to watch two sunrises a year. I know there are some people who see two or three hundred sunrises a year. I’m not one of them. As for sunsets, I’m well-rehearsed on the shift of colors, time of day across all four seasons, and I know if the back yard is glowing pink in autumn (which means I have my back to the sun) it’s my cue to go out the front door for a “red sky at night” sunset viewing.

When I do see a sunrise (at least two per year) I’m amazed at how much more aware I am of the changing sky. Maybe light emerging from the darkness is more dramatic than fading daylight, but I think it’s the rarity of my sunrise viewing that causes me to notice the fine details.

One August morning I was leaving home early with a three-hour drive ahead of me. As I backed out of the garage, I caught the morning sun filtering through the trees creating a starburst of long sunbeams. 50 feet away, one of those rays cast light on a spider web, outlining it in perfect detail. It was far from me, yet, thanks to the sunrise spotlight, I could see the sparkle of dew drops on the silken web.

August sunrise

When my dad became ill a few years ago, I went to California regularly to help take care of him. Over the next year and half, while there, one of my duties was fixing breakfast. My dad liked his breakfast at 7 AM, and we weren’t talking about a bowl of cold cereal with milk. On the farm breakfast was a full meal and my elderly parents, as much out of habit as preference, still liked yogurt and fruit with eggs and bacon, or pancakes and sausage, or hot oatmeal every day. To have it ready and served on time I was up early and therefore saw far more than the requisite two sunrises a year.

Not an early riser by nature, I was grumpy in the morning and didn’t have much patience for cooking eggs and oatmeal before I was fully awake (I once reversed the amount of water with the amount of oats and ended up with inedible paste). My reward for getting up and making breakfast became watching the sunrise from my mother’s kitchen window.

As the seasons passed, while logging away the months of my dad’s declining health, I monitored the shift of seasons by the position of the sun coming up behind the barn. The bright orange orb of summer rose far on the northern edge of the distant Sierra Nevada Mountains out of my view. By 7 AM the summer heat was already a conversation for the day. By late summer, the sunrise had started its slide south, rising along the edge of the barn. In autumn and again in the spring, from that kitchen window, I had a straight-on view of the sunrise, the coral horizon accented with great Vs of migrating geese. During winter, I’d already be clearing the table before the sun, often shrouded with dense fog or streaked with scattered clouds, showed her face on the southern edge of my view.

 

Some mornings I stepped outside in my apron and bare feet to take in the wonder of the new day while snapping a picture. But most of the time I stood at that window and thought, isn’t that sunrise worth getting up for?

Are you a sunrise or sunset person? Do you make notes of dawn and dusk skies you’ve observed and use them to inform time of day in your writing?

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

 

My Rare Pink Rocks

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By Barbara J. Eikmeier

For many years I collected sea glass. I filled a small jar with pieces from beaches in Hawaii and California. It took a long time to fill my jar. Imagine my surprise when my sister took me to Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, California. I felt like there was more glass than sand on that beach. It made my humble collection look, well, humble.

In my yard in Eastern Kansas sit two pink boulders and several lesser boulders. They were excavated when the house was built in 1992. They are probably rose quartz although I hear people call them pink granite (mine don’t look like granite.) They are unique to my area of Kansas, and I see them in neighbors’ yards too. I’m not a native Kansan but have been told these pink rocks were a gift from Minnesota, brought down during the ice age. When the ice receded, the big rocks were left behind.

Visitors from out of the area have been known to covet my pink rocks, in fact at least two visitors collected smaller samples from my property to take home with them.

When the utility company trenched across our yard to replace a gas line, they unearthed more pink rocks. The evening before the trench was to be filled in, I claimed those pink rocks. With my husband’s help we rolled the biggest and pinkest of them down the hill, laughing all the way, to the spot where the driveway leveled out. Then we got our piano mover, which is not really a piano mover, but it works like one, (I bought it at an estate sale for fifty cents!) We rolled those big rocks onto that platform and wheeled them to select locations in the gardens. The new rocks are a fraction the size of my big pink boulders, but they still weighed a ton!

I’ve been basking in the glory of owning such rare and special rocks for years.

I’m writing this post while on a road trip with my husband. We spent two days in South Dakota where pink rocks are everywhere.  Apparently, my pink rocks may have been a gift from South Dakota instead of Minnesota.

Near Sioux Falls, South Dakota there is a huge quarry with a giant heap of pink rocks.

Further west I noticed them used for landscaping at rest stops along Interstate 90. Heck, in some sections, Interstate 90 itself glows pink because it’s made of crushed pink stone mixed with the asphalt. When we stopped, I checked. I could see the bits of pink rock.

The driveway in the campground we stayed at was made of crushed pink rock. I picked up two heart shaped stones for my granddaughter. I stopped at two, but I could have found 100, all pink, all heart shaped!

And the greatest shock of all, to me anyway, was pink rocks on the edges of the train tracks.

It feels like Glass Beach all over again!

Have you ever discovered that your rare collection isn’t so rare after all?

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

Designated Parking

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By Barbara J Eikmeier

It’s back-to-school-time which means it’s time to paint the high school parking lot AGAIN. An annual tradition at our local high school, it’s a senior privilege.

My children didn’t attend this school, so I’m strictly an observer of the annual changing of the guard in the school parking lot – a local citizen enjoying the show.

I notice the transition while exercising on the school track. It starts on a weekend. Dad’s and daughters, small groups of teen boys, and threesomes of giggling girls in short shorts and tank tops descend upon the asphalt. They arrive with rolls of blue masking tape, cans of paint, and rollers with long handles. They mask frames and roll the first color of paint. As the days go by the art emerges as the rising seniors personalize their private parking spots.

Designated parking spots are everywhere. CEOs and company presidents have them. On military posts the Solider of the Month has one. I once saw one near the door in a JC Penney’s parking lot for “Mother to be”. But aside from a formal sign, they aren’t decorated.

I’m not sure how the seniors get the privilege but in my mind it’s a fundraiser – auctioned to the highest bidder, the money deposited to the Grad Night fund.

What I haven’t sorted out is why the seniors choose their particular spots. Oh sure, those coveted places near the entrance to the school make sense. A senior can push the snooze button every morning then whip into his prime parking spot and still be in his seat before the tardy bell rings. It’s a rational that I would use myself, given the chance. But what puzzles me are the random spots in the middle of the parking lot. Or those on the outer edges furthest from the door. Why there?

Google Earth image

 

A day or two before school resumes the parking lot painting wraps up. The masking tape is peeled away leaving a sharp outline well within the official white lines.

The colors are vibrant: Hot pink, sunny yellow, Black and Red, Go Lions!  The themes are as varied as the students themselves. Football player’s numbers in bold block letters, favorite car brands, pop culture icons such as Pokemon and, new this year, Hi Barbie, and of course “Class of 2024” everywhere. The trending themes, popular colors, and school pride splashes across the parking lot in a sort of “controlled graffiti”.

I never actually see the students – they’re in class when I do my laps on their track, but I sure enjoy the way they share their passions with the world in the form of a decorated parking spot.

As the months pass the vibrant colors will soften until the week after graduation when the parking spots will be painted over with black paint, the dark rectangles creating a clean canvas for the next batch of rising seniors.

Does your community have a quirky annual tradition that amuses you?

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

Perfect Sense: A Short Collection of Flashbacks

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By Barbara J Eikmeier

It was the first really hot day of summer. My car didn’t have a chance to cool down between errands. I was hot. My car was hot. Then I stepped into the CVS pharmacy. The blast of cool air from the air conditioned store hit me at the door. In that instant I had a flashback to Clark’s Drugstore, Willows, California, in the early 1970s. Situated on the corner of Sycamore and Butte Streets, I don’t even know why I went there in my teen summers. I certainly didn’t have money to buy anything, and my friends didn’t either. I think we went for the air conditioning! The feeling of the cool air in CVS brought me immediately back to Clark’s Drugstore. It was a fleeting moment, but I liked it.

I walked along Angel Falls Trail. The wide sidewalk was in complete shade, streaks of mud ran across the low spots – a reminder of the heavy rains from the previous night. I rounded the last bend before the bridge and heard the rumble of the water rolling over the falls, which always runs wild after a rainstorm. In a nanosecond it took me back to the Van Duzen River near Fortuna, California. It was 1983. I was a college student. My boyfriend kayaked that river. I often accompanied him. With my feet dangling in the cool, clear water, I studied my nursing lessons while he ran the river. I could hear the rumble of the last waterfall he would clear, just there, where the river curved, out of sight but for the sound of spilling water. Angel Falls Trail brought me back to that place.

I saw him as I left the gym. He was wearing a black cowboy hat and stood studying the blooming bushes. He looked up at me, breathed deeply and said, “They smell amazing!”

I said, “Oak Leaf Hydrangeas. They just started blooming.”

He said, “Oak Leaf?” I walked near the plants and showed him how the shape of the leaf was similar to an oak leaf. He said, “Thank you. I want to get one for my yard. I came around the corner and the smell reminded me so much of my grandma’s house.”

The feeling of air conditioning on a hot day. The sound of a waterfall after a rainstorm. The smell of a blooming shrub. They are things that take us back in time, unbidden, in a flash, sometimes jolting us with the clarity of a memory.

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

Storm Chasers

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By Barbara J Eikmeier

Living in Kansas goes hand in hand with spring storms – usually wind and rain, dramatic thunder, sometimes accompanied by hail, and less often, an actual tornado.

On occasion we will see storm chasers on the highway, heading toward the dark spot on the horizon – traveling toward that which we are fleeing. Some are storm chaser hobbyists with personalized license plates: STRM CHSR. Others are meteorologists in official capacity traveling in vans with TV station logos and high-tech gear mounted on top.

In fifteen years in my current home, we’ve had a few hailstorms roll over our property, the most dramatic being April of 2023 when 1 ¼” hailstones pummeled the house depositing a large cluster of hailstones in a pile near the front door. We discovered them the next morning. It looked as if someone had emptied an ice chest there during the night.

Hailstones 12 hours later

It was a curious sight for sure, but the hailstones melted, and we went about our life without another thought. Until the day two young men pulled in the driveway in a tan truck and rang the doorbell. From the kitchen window I watched them approach the porch – their short hair neatly combed, their shirts tucked in, a sheaf of papers in their hands. I was sure they were evangelists. I was wrong. They were storm chasers of another type.

“We’re in the neighborhood giving free roof estimates.”

When I told them I thought my roof was fine, the dark-haired guy asked, “Has someone been up on the roof to check for damage from the April hailstorm?”

He had me at “damage”. Now I wanted to know, was my roof damaged?

They were polite, professional and they had done their homework. They knew my house was in the direct path of the eye of that April hailstorm. They knew the direction it had come from, the size of the hailstones reported in my area and, before climbing onto my roof, they knew they would find damage. They were storm chasers, following the path of the storm.

I have had phone calls from companies offering free roof inspections in the past. I always thought it was peculiar – cold calling to replace worn out roofs. Now I understand, sitting here writing under my new roof, there’s nothing random about it.

Initially, I felt like an irresponsible homeowner for not knowing the amount of damage my home had suffered. For not understanding a claim to the insurance company has an expiration date relative to the date of the storm. For declining all those “free estimate” phone offers. What it took was those young men working the old-fashioned way, ringing doorbells.

If you’re looking for an unusual job for your character and a storm chaser would be perfect for your scenario, consider taking it beyond the storm and make your storm chaser work for a roofing company!

Have you ever given your character a job that begins after the main event?

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.