Writers in the family

 I love to tell stories. As a small child my mom would have to ask me if I was telling a story or if I was telling the truth. I suppose I usually answered "telling a truth" when actually I was "telling a story". This ability to make the imagination sound so real must have been pretty good. But like the boy who cried 'wolf' too many times I became unbelieveable. So when I told the truth I was not believed. Until I began to smell really stinky even after a bath. That's a story for some other time.

I began about a year ago having a muse. He talks to me just as I lay down for the night. He tells me these outrageous scenes. The scenes are so real; the smells are so bad; I am really there on a battle field. By the way, blood does not smell like copper. Smells like iron. I can not go to sleep. It is like a broken record player that never turns off. But manages to keep playing a song. Well, I get out of bed and record what he is telling me then around 2 or 3 am he quits. Blessed silence. There has been a few experiences when he has continue talking and I have continued recording until time to get up. My husband is not appreciative enough on those nights. After all, he has the whole bed to himself if you don't count the three dogs in the bed with him.

My great niece, Betsy St. Amant, is a very good writer of Christian Romance. I have seen her books at Wal-Mart or Barnes-N-Noble and I have managed to purchase most of them. I know she has a muse that speaks to her. I have heard a few stories passed down in the family that she talks out-loud (ghastly) to them. Sometimes the muse is a she and sometimes the muse if a he. 

My nephew, Jody Raney, same side of the family, writes spooky materials. He focuses on short stories about weird experiences he has had at church or the weird experiences he had as a child (no, I am not in any of the stories. I was a good aunt and although thought about torture I never acted). He has a book out and he has sent me three copies. I hope he autographed them for me.

I have more of a family history with Jody. That history has been on my mind a whole bunch lately. For one thing, we are close in age. So whenever he visited, I always took him on date with me. He could tell you tells about my and my husband (who I dated at the time) that I am sure my grown adult children would love to hear. No telling what he and my then boyfriend/now husband did when I wasn't around. Trouble, I am sure was their middle name. 

Betsy on the other hand, I am sorry to say, I do not know. I have but one memory of her as a little girl sitting at a table doing lessons. Her mother, my niece, home-schooled. I do hear that we share a love of horses. So with horses and writing perhaps we will someday forge a unbreakable bond. Her husband is a firefighter. Her great-grandfather, my dad, was also a fireman in the same town. Perhaps she will write a time travel Christian romance where her husband goes back and meets her great-grandfather. 

Do muse's run in families? Does the same muse visit each of us but tells us different stories?