Forgotten gems

Gems? Well. maybe not. But good stuff.

Gina and I have been trapped indoors as ice has decided that it needed to vacation in the Dallas area for a few days. It arrived very early Tuesday morning. Sleet woke Gina and I about 4 a.m. It was rattling the windows so loud that neither of us really got back to sleep. We tossed and turned until about 6 a.m. when Gina turned on the TV to find that her school district would be closed for the day. They haven't reopened since. Today is the third day that she's been out. To pass some time Gina went through some books on the bookshelves and started pulling out bookmarks. She got to one book -- a guide to Seville, Spain -- and I asked her to not remove that one. I'd used the book to get some info for the setting of a story and the page that was marked was the map of the street that was a big player.

Gina asked what happened to that story and why hadn't I ever done anything with it. Told her I didn't know why I hadn't done anything with it. Got me wanting to read it so I printed it and one other story yesterday and have been going through them. Neither are overly long. The story Gina asked about is just under 3,000 words. The other is just over 8,000. I've read one and am halfway through the other. And while they both need some work, they are both pretty good. I need to rework the beginning and the end of one, it's got good bones. Just needs a little remodeling.

The other seems a little closer to ready. There are a couple of spots that need to be fixed, but it's not far from being ready to publish. What publish means I don't really know yet. The better of the two stories is one of two that I wrote with the same character. It's a character I enjoyed writing so adding a couple more stories and making a Kindle collection is definitely possible.

Though I wouldn't say I'd forgotten about these stories, they'd definitely gone to the back of my mind.  Pulling them back out and looking at them again reminded me that I have some good stuff stuck on this hard drive. I need to make time to polish some of these hidden gems.