Books not written - The Ring

 

I have folders on my laptop with novels started but unfinished and short stories that need to be polished. Some have been in my files so many years, I've forgotten them.

I'm getting a good reaction to Sugar and Spice, the novella I'm serializing here.

Now I'm coming to The Ring, based on a true story.

My mother dated a lawyer for years. Jerry gave her both a poinsettia which lived for a couple of decades and at the end died as a scraggly vine and a ring. 

The ring was a gold leaf with its veins etched into the metal. 

I loved the ring as she did. When my mother died, I inherited the ring.

The first day I wore it I had a flat tire. The second time, a fight with my boss. Nothing happened the third day. I didn't wear the ring but on the forth, I dropped my tray in the company cafeteria. 

Never did I wear the ring when there wasn't a problem, albeit a minor one.

I thought of using that as a novel adding in sibling rivalry, but for some reason I gave up on it. I just went on to other projects.

Decades later living in Geneva Switzerland I was talking with a writer friend over lunch, filet des perches at Casanova facing the lac Lèman, I told her about it. That restaurant we went to regularly to discuss what we were working on. She encouraged me to go back to it. 

I didn't.

For some reason, last night I thought about getting back to the story, maybe not as a book but a novella or at least a short story...or not.

As I remember, I gave the ring to my daughter and I asked her if she remembers what happened to the ring. It was almost four decades ago. If there was a curse on the ring, my daughter had a a much better relationship with my mother than I did. I couldn't imagine my mother hurting her beloved granddaughter.

"I took it to Germany when I went to the University of Mannheim," she told me. I wore it once and had a bad day."

"Then what?"

"I kinda lost it." 

Scenes are playing in my head. I have no major writing projects at the moment. Maybe it is time to start working on The Ring again. On verra, we'll see. 

Visit https://dlnelsonwriter.com to see D-L's other works.