I’m hoping your answer to my title question is “At the Peninsula Senior Center in Klipsan Beach” for my Insights For Elders talk on “Putting the story back in history!” I’ll not only have a fun story or two of my own to tell you, but an activity (easy-peasy, I promise) to get you going on your own stories for posterity.
Besides that, afterwards I’ll be selling books — my three ghost story books, including the recently released one from Arcadia Publications’ Spooky America series called The Ghostly Tales of the Long Beach Peninsula. It’s written for kids and adapted from my first book in this genre — Ghost Stories of The Long Beach Peninsula.
I actually had a couple of middle-schooler “consultants” whose advice I tried hard to follow: “Make the stories scarier!” they said. “Make them Spookier! Creepier!” And so I did. They really are for kids of all ages — a perfect gift from the beach for a grandchild or grandparent or anyone else, for that matter. Bring your checkbooks (or cash) — I’m not equipped to take credit cards. (And did you know that my ghost stories are really history-in-disguise? — But I’ll be talking more about that on Saturday, too.)
More importantly than going home with a book in your hand, however, I hope you will take some ideas for sharing stories of your own. After all, our experiences, no matter how “ordinary” they seem to us, are the stuff of the future’s history! Let’s not allow it to be lost!