Signs and portents to a new direction?

... or simply coincidences?

Yesterday I arrived early at the dentist.  Top of the magazine pile was a Travel magazine, quickly browsed and only articles on places I'd recently been were perused.  Next, one of those glossy aspirational ones, gorgeously scruffy, scumbled paint, sun-bleached wood, Suffolk farmhouse conversions.  Just about the only thing that has me panting for riches. And dishonestly - where would I find the time?

So, I turned to a short story, read it, mildly enjoyed it, then was reminded - was forcibly dragged back to a childhood when such stories had formed part of my staple diet.  My mother's magazines, and those of my aunt.  And the neighbour's. The stories, the serials, the accompanying, usually water-colour, paintings that illustrated them (and those I do remember, wanting to emulate, believing that was what painting was for.)

I've known since I started writing, I almost never do stories.  Briefly, as I followed the dental assistant into the surgery, I wondered why.   Then the news of Alice Munro, who I had heard of but it hadn't registered that she wrote only short stories.

This morning the first line of a possible short story popped into my head. But possibly, if it grows enough, I could turn it into a novel.

How do they DO that?

I’ve just read three books in succession

Picked not quite at random, but certainly without deliberate intent to prove this thing.

Book A had a heroine called Lacey.

Book B had a man called Lacey and a heroine caller Lennie and Book C contains a minor villain character also called Lennie

It isn’t always names;  it’s quite often random references to, for example, a straw basket called a skep, which occur in consecutively read books, but I am certain that such a link  connects from one book to the next, every time.

 

Coincidences, again

Less than twelve hours after a desultory conversation about surprise birthday parties and who, if we were to have one, would we hope might be invited - and me mentioning a cousin I'm particularly fond of - this cousin's son emailed me, for the first time ever!! - to tell me he was arranging, guess what?, a surprise birthday party.

Needless to say I shall do my very best to get there even though it is at the other end of the country.