"What if you had never met me?"

"What would your life be like?"

Leah Stewart, The Myth of You and Me

We took our coffee and climbed up to the flat, lattice-framed roof as sunbeams sliced through the overhanging branches. "...Let's do this every morning. We'll come up here and have some tree house tributes..."

At six, with the sun low and the temperature falling, we regrouped in the tree house with my pitcher of margaritas, Johanna's chicken salad and the last of the local tomatoes bought for the holiday weekend.

...

By the time Lilly shared her margarita's secret ingredient ("I set off the lime with a touch of simple syrup, same as I make for sweet tea.") we were sipping on the roof, the air sweet with honeysuckle and a CD of Cuban salsa music.

The Chick Palace

Three Dilemmas, Two Friends, One Deserted Tree House

During a simmering summer on Lake Allamuchy

What's it going to be then, eh?

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

Long before there was a plot,

long before Johanna Wheeler & Lilly Covington

dove head first into their simmering summer

on Lake Allamuchy, New Jersey,

there was a very real, very deserted tree house

in Massachusetts.

And there were two very real friends & next door neighbors

who confiscated it

for commiseration, conversation & cahoots.

All it took was my imagination to move it...

to the empty meadow

with the commanding view,

Behind Johanna's "cottage"

and Lilly's bungalow.

What's it going to be then, eh?

Commiseration, conversation & cahoots

The Chick Palace

Three Dilemmas, Two Friends, One Deserted Tree House

Who's there?

Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Darkness

I grew up with tales from my mother's childhood summers.

The house across the stream, with the chauffeur's quarters

over the garage & a sleeping porch.

A clay tennis court, gone to seed during WW2 when gas

was rationed & fewer folks could get there to maintain it.

A dock and canoe. Always a dock, always a canoe.

Lily pads. Always the lily pads & painted turtles sunning themselves.

Who's There? Happy ghosts of summers past hovering just over the shoulders of the

happy figments of my imagination.

The Chick Palace

Three Dilemmas, Two Friends, One Deserted Tree House

during a simmering summer on Lake Allamuchy

All this happened, more or less.

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

A big view from a big porch on a small cottage proved the perfect spot to wonder, to wait and finally to welcome Johanna & Lilly as they introduced themselves to my imagination.

The Chick Palace

Three Dilemmas, Two Friends, One Deserted Tree House

during a simmering summer on Lake Allamucy

✍ ✍ All this happened, more or less. ✍ ✍

The mole had been working very hard all morning,

spring cleaning his little home.

Kenneth Graham, The Wind in the Willows

On my recent dump run, after the recycling and clothing donations, I hit the book exchange to donate some hardcover fiction and writing guides. Even though I'm no longer on the hunt for memorable first lines, I'm incapable of leaving without a quick perusal of what's on the shelves. And lucky for me.

As if to illustrate blog post #1, I spotted a copy of my Scholastic mid-grade novel NOBODY LISTENS TO ME, complete with my inscription on the title page.

Nov, 1991

Happy Reading, Meghan

♡ Leslie D. Guccione

Mine was a full house back then, including three children finding their voices, making their way. Write what you know.

Twenty years later my kids have found their voices & chosen their paths. I wonder if that long ago reader Meghan has, too. Twenty years later my current characters stumble along life's bumpy, circuitous routes and wonder about those roads not taken. As do we all.

(Johanna) "One minute we're singing along with Percy Sledge in Fraser Hall, the next we're losing parents and waving off children. How'd we get here so fast?"

(Lilly) "In my case? Mostly via the breakdown lane."

As Johanna and Lilly will tell you, humor smooths the way. Still, you'll want to fasten your seat belts.

When I am Queen of the World

We will move all this shopping mania & money-hemorrhaging foolishness where it belongs.

To

Valentine's Day

...in mid-February when we need this coast-to-coast, manufactured cheeriness

that herds us into the gift giving, card sending, cookie baking frenzy.

Mid-February

• ...when rain spits. Snow flies, falls, freezes & what's been plowed blocks the driveway and the parking lot.
• Valentine's Day won't ruin Thanksgiving.
• Valentine's Day will boost the economy as more love, BFF and smoozy songs will need to be written, recorded and blasted.
• Valentine's Day will boost the economy as it ropes in my Jewish friends, my Muslim friends. People of all faiths and persuasions can wrap their houses in heart shaped twinkle lights.
• Agnostics and atheists can partake without having to pretend they believe in anything more than love, love, love.
• We can all be sincerely sincere.
• No one will be offended by "Happy holiday!"

This would leave my December to the holly and the ivy. To carols at front doors & in the sanctuary. To nativity scenes only on consecrated property. To Wise Men on Twelfth Night and wreaths off the door the next morning.

In the meantime, to Advent and candle #2.

It's not all WORDS at work

This time last year my art teacher/artist/creative genius friend Betsy Ogden decided to make a Christmas tree from Duxbury driftwood. We set off one freezing afternoon along the beach road, scarved and earmuffed, to scour the sand & scrub for discards.

Amidst good conversation and more than a little laughter, we managed to drag broken snow fencing, pine saplings, bits of destroyed lobster traps and the odd remnants of a summer bonfire back to her Jeep.

Home it went and with the help of her husband: VOILA

Friendship is the glue that binds THE CHICK PALACE. The easy ones you've had forever and the ones that just feel that way. The stuff that makes a December afternoon on a New England beach feel like July. The stuff in novels that makes turning the last page bittersweet.