Introducing Mrs. Crouch

Yesterday, and again today, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting new people and catching up with old friends – everyone concerned in some way with my all-time favorite things – reading good books, writing good reads, and stimulating conversation!  What better way to while away the hours of this cold, cold spell in January?

Hunkered by the fire in our library or clutching steaming cups of designer coffees at Adelaide’s, I was transported into the world of books and film scripts and Peninsula memories – all from disparate sources and, yet, circling the same topics of interest to each of us.

It began yesterday when seven people from the MLK Book Club of Seattle came to meet me and Mrs. Crouch!  The book club is comprised of six couples who have been meeting every six weeks or so for thirty years!  Many of them are teachers (or retired teachers) and, for their annual Martin Luther King three-day weekend, they come to the Peninsula, rent a house, and discuss their current book choice.  The book they are discussing (perhaps as we speak) is Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, although two of the members confessed to me that they couldn’t get through it.

One of the group (Phil) contacted me several months ago and invited me to come and speak to them about Ghost Stories of the Long Beach Peninsula.  He thought the group would love knowing the Peninsula from a different perspective.  As it turned out, I asked them to the house, took them on a house tour, and then went to Adelaide’s for coffee with them.   We had so much fun talking about common interests, how our respective book clubs were organized, and favorite authors, that I never did tell them about the ghost stories centering on Adelaide’s that have thinking about “More Ghost Stories of the Long Beach Peninsula.”

Maggie

This morning I was back at Adelaide’s having coffee with Maggie Stuckey – the most prolific and quintessentially professional writer I know.  Maggie has been published by more big name houses than you can shake a stick at and talking with her about her latest projects is always a pleasure.  I shamelessly pick her brain about all manner of things.  She gives me advice (when I ask) but doesn’t chide me if I fail to follow it.  I count myself lucky to be her friend.

A few hours later, I was here in Oysterville talking with script writer Aaron Rabin and his father, Ron.  Aaron has been here before and we’ve communicated by email, as well.  He has so many irons in the fire, I have trouble keeping up – a movie script based in Pacific County; another that takes place in Grays Harbor County.  Both “dark” and involving multiple murders, based partly on real events.  Which prompted me to show him my Jail House Stories of Early Pacific County. Which he promptly bought.  His dad nudged him to tell me about the Chinese contract he has signed to do a series of one of the important ‘sagas’ of Chinese literature – for the Western market.  Wow!

Aaron and Suria

That led us to a bit of a discussion about what’s on the horizon for U.S. relations with China, about our wariness concerning our President-Elect and, somehow, to the fact that Ron is a Clinical Psychologist and, totally unrelated to any of the above, that Ron has actually stayed in Oysterville in years past – at Tucker’s house!!  Wouldn’t you know that there would be one of those six (or actually two) degrees of separation among all of us schmoozers!

What a couple of days!  I loved it all!  I am full of inspiration and resolve about my next book.  I really need to lock myself away but… think of all the fun I would miss!  As usual, I want to do it all.