JOURNEY INTO FICTION

The sign on the door said FICTION. I figured the door must have been recently replaced, because it had no panels of antiquity, but seemed hollow. It had no keyhole for me to peek through. I hesitated to open it, since the foul odor oozing through the crack under the thing indicated that the material within had lost quality.

I tried the knob, and discovered it turned freely, but the door did not budge. It seemed that it was braced from within. Indeed, the accumulated filth yielded only slowly, as the bulldozer blade of the door plowed it back. Darkness filled the room. My flashlight glittered off of broken fragments of the light bulb that were scattered in the center of the room. Dark slime hung in sheets below shelves of books, some volumes covered in cloth and some in paper.

Across the room, I spotted a shelf labeled CLEAN AND WHOLESOME. Few books rested there, and that shelf also dangled sheets of the same obnoxious slime. It appeared every category had deterioriated, either through explicit filth or through inuendo. Values had corroded, and boundaries had been torn down.

I whispered, “Blasphemy!”

Bubbles of offensive gases burst through the slime.

My whisper became a shout, and the bubbles burst into lightless flame, invisible, yet able to utterly destroy. I pulled on the doorknob, and the room was again closed.

A writer, my creative mind took a Quixotic turn. With my pen, I would not joust at windmills, but I would drag the inky nib across white paper, soiling it with tinted words that would not seep slowly to the floor, waiting to foul the footsteps of those who wandered the paths that wound through the canyons of my mind. The light of the Word would illumine the lives of the characters who played out their stories in the theater of the mind. I would write fiction. I would label my shelf Historic Romance. It would be clean and wholesome. I would not be an historic revisionist, and I would not open the bedroom door.

Pick an era. Search out the events and people who shaped that age. Insert fictional characters, and have them interact with the real folks and events they encounter. Place all of the characters on stage, and have them improvise. Change scenes and groupings of characters. Insert challenges. This is the stuff of fiction.

The result is a novel set on the Oregon Trail, from flood-ravaged Ohio to the Willamette Valley. To make it more challenging, the main character undertakes a solo journey, a quest in response to a message from the Oregon Territory. No spoilers here, folks. Look on Amazon for Unintended Journey, Unintended Bride. Let the folks between the covers take their places, and act out the story. A word of caution: The writer needed to keep a hanky handy. Enjoy.