Partieee...!

We had a reunion... sort of.

It started with two too many glasses of a fine vintage and my mood became lugubrious. I was thinking wouldn’t it be nice to have a party right about now? But who would be available and willing at this late hour of the night?

You guessed it, just me and the bottle. We are, how shall I put it, infrequent companions. We say hello, click a glass, but rarely two. Tonight, we sort of drifted into this private moment after a long day of renovating my website (www.seeWordFactory.com).

Back to guests, however. I don’t know who thought of it first, me or the bottle, but I was telling stories about all the characters I have created, sweated over details, gave them each a persona. And the next thing you know there they were and we were having animated conversations. Before I knew it, there was music, dancing and another barrel being tapped for distribution. Marcus my Roman legionnaire was chatting up Amanda and Rufus was putting the move on Gitta (That’s not right... they promised eternal love to someone else...). Girard was ... well I better not tell you what he was doing...

The point is or was, the ones I thought were so entertaining, weren’t always, and the shy ones turned up to party, I mean really get it on. My heroes often weren’t so heroic, and to my surprise, the villains were well rounded, convivial guest who observed all the protocols. Yes Sir, my lofty, noble characters wanted to descend into chaos of the low side, and the curb side rose to meet them.

I had another glass, frankly I think by then it was straight out of the bottle (get rid of the middle man I say...) and I was thinking ... man alive, as I look around and see what I see, I would have written much different books.


I woke next morning, late, with a hangover, and a taste in my mouth that would have sank the Titanic if it had not been sunk already.

Later, as the pills mopped up some of the leftover detritus of the previous night, I thought, that how interesting it would be if I could write my own life, freely manipulate circumstances, conquer who or what I willed, rearrange my fortunes in some other way.

In the end I didn’t know how many actually turned up, but I caught a few glimpses of creatures that were part of some backstory who never even made it into one of the books. I also counted three bottles gone, one rolled way under the couch. And someone had pizza that smeared the finish of the cherry wood table...