CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

June 17_Blogging & Gulf Destruction 834 wc

An intriguing surprise yesterday: I discovered that you, Gentle Readers, do indeed exist! And here all this time I thought I preached to the void! But no-a comment on Facebook impelled me to check for the first time the stats on this item, and most amazingly, I do have readers: the vast majority non-WDC members! That seriously freaked me out. But that's fine: the blog restriction is set to allow public reading, so be it. Most of my writings in my WDC Portfolio now are set for Registered Authors and above-which, it is true, does not allow for the general public, but hey, how easy it is to first open a free account, thereby becoming a Registered User, and then to add one single item into one's Port, becoming a Registered Author? No problemo!





         Actually it was a positive response that impelled me to check the stats, and very possibly-likely-unrelated to the blog; but I had the content of yesterday's entry on my mind when I read the message, so I thought to myself to check out the readership. Expecting none, I was pleasantly surprised and gratified.





         In the bad news category (and isn't there always a plenitude of that) we now learn that not only the OIL SPILL is killing marine life and birds, but so is the clean-up. Yes, Gentle Readers, the very acts supposed to clear the SPILL are destroying Gulf life. I strongly recommend all read this enlightening article-”read it and weep”:





http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-burnbox-20100617,...





I guess now that I know I have readership I shall begin serializing my current novel-in-progress, Finding The Abandoned Child, a stand-alone novel in a sub-sub-sub-genre niche I term “Environmental Disaster Fantasy.” Hence, Finding The Abandoned Cbild.

FINDING THE ABANDONED CHILD





An Environmental Disaster Urban Fantasy Novel





PROLOGUE





A mild natural disaster had caused our small town to shift itself some distance to one end: that is, everybody moved out of the “center city” to one side and extended the town away from the area most affected. One set of those was the compound in which I and my mother lived. Buildings were not destroyed, or not to the point that we could not re-enter to acquire our possessions. No injuries, apparently, either. Just a good bit of uproar, an entire city, for the most part, moving house.





         A pastor lived in our compound too; besides my mother, he, and myself, there were maybe only four others. We owned a long, oddly-angled, pale stucco home with airy rooms and a wide yard.





         We all moved out, to the far edge of town, and then my mother determined to go back to the former home for our possessions. I wanted to go along but she said she could do it alone and took off. The others will fixing up the new house, so I left to follow her but she moved faster than was possible and was soon out of sight. I walked up a residential road with a narrow sidewalk and grass between the street and the sidewalk and with narrow but lush lawns before the houses, seeing nothing amiss at that time. When I came to a street angling diagonally in front of me, a less well-mannered neighborhood with houses converted into apartment buildings, many people were about, and the atmosphere was almost more like that of a block party than of moving day. I could not find my mother so rather than go on to our old home, I decided to turn back. When I came up on to the sidewalk at that end of the quiet residential street, I glanced down. In the lawn near the sidewalk at the corner closest to the diagonal street, lay an abandoned infant, naked, silent, awake.





         Immediately I reached down and picked up the child. Rather than try at any of the homes, which now appeared empty, if not actually abandoned, I crossed the street and entered an alley running diagonally away from the street on which I had discovered the baby. Here there was plenty of activity, and I soon came to a woman and her adolescent son, who were collecting their possessions and bringing them out into the alley for loading and transport. I asked her to please call the police, and she did and then handed me her cell phone. I continued to hold the child, who still had not cried nor shown any signs of distress, talking on the cell phone to the dispatcher while first a police car, then an ambulance, pulled up on the street near the end of the alley. The policewoman quizzed me at great length, over and over, while I refused to release the baby until the EMT arrived with a stretcher and diaper and checked the boy over to ascertain injury. He reported the infant was in good condition, then bundled him into the ambulance to take in to the hospital, thus relieving me of his immediate care, though not of my concern.