By
Heather Hambel Curley (Guest Blogger)
If
the experts are right, and we’re supposed to write what we know, I
really should be writing the dull saga of a mid-thirties mother, who
is still obsessed with boy bands, wears too much eyeliner, and stays
in the house most of the time. Not like, sexy housewife stays in the
house all day, but more like working a day job, doing laundry, and
picking up a bizarre amount of sweaty, stinky socks draped around the
house by two children. And never getting to use the bathroom alone.
Relatable.
But not exciting.
When
I started writing I was in fourth grade. My best friend Sara and I
wrote stories about girls exactly like us—except way more
popular—who ate lunch together in the cafeteria, liked grape
kool-aid, and watched VCR tapes together after school. Shortly after
that, when I was far more sophisticated and worldly, in fifth grade,
I started writing ‘scary’ stories about four friends who were
abandoned by a creepy school bus driver in the woods and start
exploring a haunted house: falling through floors, kissing boys, and
solving mysteries. All without one single cell phone!
Once
I figured out that I was taking this ‘writing what you know’
thing way more literally than was good for my writing, I started to
write about what I wanted. I wrote about women with lots of tattoos
and piercings; of teenage girls who battle ghosts during the Civil
War; of drug addicted survivors and of brooding, long haired men. I
wrote the stories that I wanted to read—awkward women like me, but
with better paying jobs from college degrees they actually use and
adventures that leave me breathless. Is it always what I know? Not
exactly. But, I mean, I know how to be female. So, that’s a
start. And I’ll take inspiration from wherever I can get it: I
once wrote a novel after being inspired by a zombie video game my
husband was playing. The novel had nothing to do with zombies: it
was the setting; the Wild West and a long haired, brooding male
character. Yee haw!
That’s
not to say that I don’t sometimes
stumble upon my own adventure. I’m a mom, for pete’s sake,
there’s nothing more terrifying than two boys who have been quiet
for way too long, followed by, “Hey, Mom….come see what we did!”
I’ve ridden the Hot Mess Highway since my first son was born in
2010. But I’ve also done a wee bit of traveling: I’ve stood on
top of Mayan ruins in Mexico. I’ve been drunk in a speeding taxi
in Bulgaria. I’ve petted a rhinoceros. I’ve run a
half-marathon. And from those experiences, comes reality in writing:
the eerie silence and smooth stones in temple ruins; the thrill of a
car chase; the heart-pounding panic of being next to a giant, wild
creature (except I was at the zoo and it was in a holding space….not
like, me on some kind of safari with a jaunty hat and khaki shorts).
My
most recent release, Claimed, has absolutely nothing to do
with anything I know. But it’s definitely something I’d want to
read:
The
first time the world ended, she went into hiding.
The
second time, she became a fugitive.
When
war breaks out between two American political coalitions, witch Wren
Richards is forced into hiding. She and her family conceal themselves
and their power, living on only what they can grow and create with
their own hard work. But then there is a break in the doldrums of
normalcy: Wren is sent to fetch supplies in town.
And
then the atomic bomb hits. Everything changes. Now Wren isn’t
just a witch: she’s
a survivor. A slave. A water seeker. A murderer. She and her sister
are kidnapped and dragged to another dimension. As witches, they’ll
fetch a higher dollar at auction. Because as witches, energy can be
sourced from their souls. The only person who can save Wren is
herself.
And
she’s
just been sold to the highest bidder.
Maybe
Wren is a throwback to those kids on the school bus I wrote about in
fifth grade. She’s on the run, acting on instinct and gut feeling.
There’s no cell phones, no one to help her. And then, just when
she thinks it can’t get any worse….the world ends. Again. In
the end, though, she’s just as awkward and unimpressed as the rest
of us:
When
the
Age of Man was balanced on a
crumbling precipice, the covens shattered and we returned to the
woods.
We’d
fled to the forest a week before my nineteenth birthday and now, a
year
later, we were still here. My mother’s precognition abilities were
first rate, but even she had to admit her visions had changed. The
End was less certain now. There was still a finality to
everything—to man, to Earth, to the stagnant lives we lived—but
she couldn’t tell us how it was going to happen.
Or
when.
I
flexed my arms, forcing my body weight down on the mortar to grind
the corn into a fine powder. When we’d left our
house in the city, my father insisted we retreat as far from
civilization as we could. That meant felling our own trees and
building our homestead by hand; we harvested our own food and sought
out clean water. Clean was turning out to be a relative term. When
my parents weren’t looking, my younger sister would cast a
purification spell and we lugged the buckets back to the lodge.
I
dragged my wrist across my forehead, blotting away beads of sweat. A
year. We’d been tucked in the hills for over a
year and still weren’t allowed to use our powers. No magic. No
spells or telekinesis. Before the war, we’d kept our abilities to
ourselves—unless under Coven sanction—but now? We were alone.
There was no one to panic that we were writhing with the devil or
causing all the world’s problems with our abilities. No one to
grit their teeth and spit at us. Witch.
Their fear of the unknown, the things they didn’t understand,
always spewed out as hate.
Leaning
back against my heels, I arched my back in an attempt to ease the
searing pain from my spine. War was everywhere. You
can’t rely on power alone, my parents
drilled it into our heads like there was a chance we might forget,
you need to take what you have and
survive. Thrive.
I
crouched over the corn again, slamming the pestle against the
kernels. I wouldn’t call this thriving. This
was hard work: this was waking up early and going to bed as soon as
the sun set. This was the shit I’d read about in history class
when I’d been in school. It was no way to live.
“I’m
so tired of cornbread.” My sister, Soleil, set a large bucket on
the ground and settled down next to it, reaching in and pulling out
the skeleton of a basket. Pushing her sleeves up, she started
weaving the reeds together. “For
once, I’d love one of those yeast rolls Nana Gumm used to make when
we were kids. Remember?”
“Well.
Find me yeast, flour that doesn’t turn rancid in this godawful
heat, and bring Nana Gumm back from the dead.” I threw my back
into the grinding, trying to force the kernels to break up on my
sheer will alone. “Then
you can have yeast rolls.”
“With
melted butter? Remember?” She grinned, her smile punctuated by
her dimples. “That
was always the best part of dinner. I could have eaten a dozen on my
own.”
“She’s
been dead almost thirteen years. I’m surprised you remember.”
“I
remember everything.”
She
was right. Soleil was only sixteen, but it seemed like she’d
honed in on her abilities far better than I ever had. Part of me
hated her for it: her abilities to commune with nature, to properly
and efficiently cast a healing spell or circle spell. She couldn’t
master divination and her telekinetic abilities were almost
nonexistent. At least I had that over her.
About
the Author
Heather
Hambel Curley is a thirty-something year old fake red head from the
city of Pittsburgh. She has a growing collection of tattoos, a love
for the Caribbean, and an obsession for running (like a T-Rex, she
has strong legs and feeble arms). Currently, she lives in central
Pennsylvania with her patient husband and two, rowdy sons.
