Becalmed No Longer

Tadie Longworth wouldn’t stop poking at me. She was tired of her quiet, monochromatic life and all those breezeless days. I could sympathize. After all, we’re both sailors.

I finally have good news for her and her Beaufort friends. My agent, Terry Burns, forwarded a contract yesterday that will let Tadie kick up her heels and see a little color in her life.

I’ve tweaked my stories, slashed and dashed, set one aside to write another. From keyboard to floppy discs and later onto one hard drive after another, characters have lived with me and begged for breathing room. Some only told me a bit about themselves, a paragraph or two, a chapter, and so they waited. Or I waited, until their clamoring forced me to people their world and let them into mine.

Now, the first of my Beaufort stories has found a home. Tadie, who loves to sail to Cape Lookout in a sharpie much like mine, will find her way into print at a fitting home: Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. Can you imagine a more perfect name for a publisher of my sailing stories? Jilly must be doing a little happy dance, her bright orange pigtails bouncing as she peeks out from the companionway steps at the brilliant color of the sunrise. “Wake up, daddy! We’ve got things to do and people to meet!”

Becalmed is becalmed no longer. Keep a look out for more news of Tadie and the Beaufort crew as it becomes available.