On eccentricity

On February 25 the first in my Gasper’s Cove Crafters series will be released. I loved writing that book and have just finished the second one, which will be published the end of the year. I am also going to release some shorter novellas in between because there is a lot to say about Gasper’s Cove.

I live in Nova Scotia. I write about here because this province is so rich in characters that it has developed an almost inbred tolerance for eccentricity. Small parts of people I know have been combined to make the fictional personalities in my books and this has made them easy for me to see and write.

The funny thing about this approach however, is that some editors have found aspects of my folks hard to believe. The best part of these comments is that what they found difficult to imagine were the parts that were most real.

Which brings me to the topic of eccentricity.

I come from a long line of highly successful eccentrics.

My mother used to wash the carrots in the washing machine. She had a theory that the little holes in the drum wore away the skin, so she wouldn’t have to peel them. My father used to put cans of spaghetti in the car engine to cook on long car trips, ready for lunch. And, I had a great uncle who went to his daughter’s bridal shower dressed as a woman, so effectively, that his own wife and daughter didn’t even recognize him. If I put all this into a book, and one day I might, who would believe it?

But what a thing it is to be so reckless, so confident, so secure as to be that original. How much do we lose when we sand off the corners of people with self-improvement, self-awareness, and self-actualization?

Where’s the story there?