My writing world

I've had to set aside my menage right now for projects that have deadlines. First up is my story for the silver foxes pax that's coming up later this year. My story is tentatively titled The Mansions By the Seashore, and it's about a successful Manhattan caterer who returns to the posh island where he lived until he was 12 to prove to himself he's moved on from it. I don't have much so far, but this is the opening:

*_*_*

The thing about memories...you always find out too late when they're based on lies. See, the brain is a beautiful construction. It knows we humans need those roots to cling to. So if it decides we are in short supply of happy memories about our parents for instance, it makes them up to fill in the gaps. It's like psychic spackle. Leave it long enough and it looks like it was always there.

Until we come face to face with its deception and realize there are holes in our lives that memories can't patch up.

Cardinal Island was my hole, the rift I'd come back to confront only to discover it was actually an abyss.

With my hands curled around the latte I'd got from the Flour Garden--no Starbucks for Cardinal Island, no siree bob, too commercial for these pompous locals--I gazed around the central square of downtown, watching people go about their daily business. It was them as much as the architecture that left me dazed. In my head, Cardinal residents never did their own shopping, and yet, I counted three different mother and offspring sets doing just that. More bizarrely, nearly everyone who walked by greeted me with a smile.

Do you remember me? I'd think as each one passed me.

If they did, they gave no indication beyond their cordial welcome of waggled fingers or the curl of their mouths. I was a mystery, the unknown in their midst. Perhaps locals confronted their enigmas head on these days rather than in the whispers and closed doors of yore.