A Love for Reading Books. As a young child growing up in Pennsylvania, not yet able to read or write, I’d pretend a story from the colorful cartoons printed on the back of a corn flakes cereal box. Alphabet letters scribbled inside odd-shaped bubbles. But, having no idea what they meant the only thing in my mind to do was to make something up.
As my sister and I learned to read our grandparents bought sets of children’s encyclopedias for us. Wonderful books about different lands, cultures, and peoples. My favorite was the one on Lapland. The people wore vibrantly-colored clothing and shoes that turned up at the toes tied with ribbons. Most of all, reading those beloved books invoked a sense of being swept away to a distant ethereal world.
By the age of 12, I was reading Alfred Hitchcock. A favorite of his – “Stories That Scared Even Me”, a collection of scary short stories. As a member of Hitch’s Mystery Magazine Club, a fresh magazine arrived in the postal mail every month containing ads to take a trip on the Orient Express Dinner Train where the lights go out, murder is staged and enraptured guests are tasked with figuring out who did it. It has always been a romantic fantasy of mine to ride that dinner train for a tasty evening of a good who done it adventure.
The Book Mobile came to our neighborhood once every week all summer long while school was out. This prepubescent young girl was ever faithful to be first in line returning the previous week’s borrowed books and choosing two others for another glorious week of voracious reading. I chose books like spine-chilling murder mysteries, the eerie paranormal, and the creepy supernatural. Fantastic edge of your seat tales set amidst esoteric characters. They served as magical flying carpets to another time and space.
It was the suspense that I loved, knowing that they were just stories and a figment of someone’s lively imagination. There were no nightmares. That didn’t happen until I saw The Exorcist.
It made me a shakey basket case for two weeks jumping at the sight of my own shadow. Swore I’d never watch it again. Well, that was a lie. I went back several times to see the parts that I missed when I had covered my eyes. The scariest movie I’d ever seen in my life
Later, it was the likes of Stephen King, Patricia Cornwell, Barker, Koontz, and Christie. Prolific writers of ghostly encounters and the dark abstruse angles of human nature. However, “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, is an all-time treasured literary classic. It was required reading in elementary school and I loved every word of it.
Now, all grown up it is time to pen and self-publish my own writing. Stirring events that have occurred in my life deserve to have juicy stories are woven around them that can transport readers to another time, another space, and beyond. May you find reading the stories as enjoyable as I have enjoyed writing them.
