1) My sister and I were in the living room of our apartment. She was typing away, preparing her essay, and I was lounging on the couch, reading a book and sipping on tea. Then I heard her say: “June…what…what is that?!” I slowly turned sideways to see her staring up at something on the curtain. Before I could get over to check it out, she screamed and shot back, and that was when a black thing with wings fluttered to the other curtain across the room. It looked like a beetle of some sort. Or a veryyy, veryyy big fly.

What do two young ladies who are terrified of bugs do?

I, the oldest sister, scrambled away to the far corner of the room while my sister jumped up and down, her face pale, telling ME to catch the thing. We bickered for a few seconds: “You catch it!” “Nooo you catch it” “YOU catch it!” It ended up being my sister; I agreed to be the assistant a.k.a The Side-kick. So she got this plastic milk jug, crept over to the curtain, and slammed it over the bug. She tried to slide the jug so that we could close the opening with a magazine. But in this attempt, the bug ended up flying out somehow, while another SAME ugly black bug flew in from the open balcony door. We screamed and huddled in the center of the living room, staring with terror and the two bugs clinging to the curtain. I threw a pencil at it. Other objects followed along. The startled bugs finally flew onto the table.

Extreme measures needed to be taken. I decided to take control of the situation. So I took a broom and smacked it over the bug on the glass table….a loud clang fractured the still night silence, dust clouded the air and the bug flew away to the edge of the table. I kept my eyes on this one while my sister looked for the other that had fluttered away somewhere. She found it on the wall above our TV. So she took the broom and smacked it. It fell behind the TV. Then she looked at me and said: “June, now it’s your turn. Get a magazine and squish that bug on the table.” And my reply was: “C-c-couldn’t you? I’ll clean it up.” So she got the magazine and, while screaming, threw it onto the bug. I said, “I…think…it’s dead…” while inching closer. I took the broom and–clang, clang!–I continued to hit it over the magazine, and then smoothed the broom over it as well. Then I looked beneath our glass dining table to see black bug juice smeared all over the magazine.

Now that that was done my sister told me to clean it up. I told her I couldn’t, for fear of the other bug attacking me, because it could still be alive, you know! So I pulled out the furniture bug#2 had fallen behind. And, lo and behold, it was NOT dead. So my sister got the broom and–bang! bang!–hit is over the bug. It died.

All this happened at 2 a.m. with much screaming  and much banging and clanging and thumping and, finally, a burst of laughter over the possible scenerios that could have outcomed from this incident. Say a neighbour had heard the scream and thought we were being attacked and so called the police…? Because we were screaming pretty loudly. And I felt pretty bad for the neighbour living downstairs. It must have been pretty noisy. This got me thinking. Why are we (not all, but many) so scared of bugs? Why are we, creatures who are 10000000+ times bigger than the bugs, scared of them?

2) Now, on the writing front, I am about 15,000 words into my new book titled: Be Still My Heart. This story is actually not the troubled marriage story I mentioned a few weeks ago. I tried my hands on that but failed miserably. It seems I must wait until I get married, or at least wait until I’m in a relationship, before I can successfuly carry that story out. Be Still My Heart, however, has been a joy to plot and write. It is a love story, but it’s also focused on a broken father-son relationship. James, the Earl of Carlyle, is the hero whose life’s goal is to have revenge on his father. And the revenge is one that places a wedge between himself and the heroine, Henrietta Wilson, and threatens to tear them apart forever. Here’s a very small, UN-EDITED (meaning, I don’t know if I’ll keep it or not) snippet:

…For a moment, James looked back in shame at his life of hard gambling and drinking–a life driven by the sole purpose of ruining himself so that he might one day open his arms and look at his father, saying: “Look at me. Look at what you have done to me.”

My friend sent me a song that really inspired me as I wrote. It wasn’t so much the lyrics that inspired me, but the background music. It’s haunting. I let my sister listen to it and she said it was weird. But I LOVE it so much! Here it is below. And I would appreciate it so much if you guys could share some of your favorite songs that inspire you as you write.