Excerpt from “Shifting Sands: Secrets”

On the first day of spring, I drove to the nearby Murray Lake for inspiration and meditation to finish the last story in the new book “Shifting Sands: Secrets” slated for spring publication.

The lake was thawing and the ducks were bathing in the fresh streams.

It was only me, a diehard ice fisherman and a curious blue heron perched on a piece of floating ice. Later, it started snowing mixed together with rain.

I had to get out of the car to get a photo of that brave man, who was literally floating on the remaining ice. The man was totally oblivious to his surroundings.

Did I find my inspiration?

I have to answer the question: I did find inspiration on the shores of a water body. This time 1,000 miles up North from where I found the first pieces of inspiration on the Gulf for the following story.

Excerpt from “Six Palms by the Tiki”

“What kind of secrets were hiding in those calcium skeletons built by slimy mollusks that have no spine?” Amora often wondered.

After all, the mollusks were long dead when washed ashore eaten by another sea creature. Most big shells had broken fringes and fragments of shells were more usual than whole intact shells. To find shells still attached to each other was out of the norm completely.

Amora paid $2 for a cup of Venetian coffee at Papa’s. The hot dark liquid still steaming vaguely reminded her of mornings Up North. Seadog George was always available for a chat. He had a tan of a sailor and considered himself to be one, since he had spent the last 15 years on the pier’s deck hovering 20 feet above water.

“Do you ever get seasick?” asked Amora naively searching George’s tanned hardened by wind and sun.

“Sometimes, I do when the wind is high and the pier sways in the waves,” he said. “But they built to withstand anything from Brazilian swamp wood that has already grown in water.”

Tall seadog George wasn’t a native of Florida, although he wished he was. Once he tried to pretend in front of tourists that he was a Floridian.

“Come on buddy, you sound like the Yankees, you can’t lose that,” laughed the New Yorker. “I am a fourth generation Yankee, I know.”

From then on, George stopped pretending. With blonde hair matching the tan and the beard, Amora guessed he must have been Norwegian or Swedish. She hasn’t found the guts yet to ask him; Amora didn’t want to be either too friendly or too nosy, or worse yet: Seadog George could think she was hitting on him.

She only engaged enough in casual talk to finish the cup of Venetian coffee without having to walk with it.

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