Saturday 15 March 2014

What Inspired the Wishing Stone and Other Myths


While visiting Facebook the other day I saw a photo taken on Gull Cliff, QC, some time in the sixties.  There were two young girls in the photo, about the same age as the main characters in my up and coming children's historical fiction, the Wishing Stone and Other Myths Learned on Gull Cliff Island. I was reminded of the photo above. The black and white responsible for my novel's creation.

The snap I'm sharing was taken not on Gull Cliff but in Aylmer Sound, Quebec, and the two girls in it are my mother Charlotte and aunt Sylvia.  Though the girls in this photo are younger than my book's main characters, it was in fact this black and white which inspired my hand to weave a tale that would revive a unique history.  The communities along the Lower North Shore own an arduous past to be proud of, and those who lived it deserve recognition.  There wasn't much along that coastline for some time, but the people living along it endured, and created a peoples who even today work as a team.

Throughout my childhood I enjoyed tales told by my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles etc., about living in summer and winter homes, and how someone as young as my own mother knew a time without electricity.  During a time when I needed something new to write about I fell upon this picture, and the old stories came pouring back, flooding my mind with one name... Little Dot.  


The summer Camp my family enjoyed on Old Edward's Island

Please keep in touch to ensure you don't miss Morning Rain Publishing's release date for the Wishing Stone and Other Myths (Lessons Learned on Gull Cliff Island).




2 comments:

  1. As a former resident of Gull Cliff, a relative, a life long family friend, your former teacher and the taker of the picture of the two girls on Gull Cliff I just can't wait to read this book!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can't believe this! You took that picture? That really is something lol! I can't wait to tell Mom about that, I don't think she has a clue! Thank you for your support Mrs. B, it means so much.

    ReplyDelete