More Details about My Inner Life

Jan. 25, 1970   Dear Cassandra,

Tomorrow I am going to school.   I have something cute to say.  It happened about a month ago and had completely forgotten it. My father and I were taking about people.  He said that when you ask people what famous person they look like they will show their vanity and start thinking and then say someone.  To prove it he asked Jeanette – she hadn’t heard the discussion – and she said “I hope this isn’t a joke and you say “Lassie” (Lassie is a dog on TV).  I thought that was funny.

Friday as usual I watched “Here Come the Brides” and Jennifer West played Holly Houston as a guest star.  I just want to say that I love her voice. It’s, well I can’t explain it, sort of rough, squeaky and smooth all at once; if you know what I mean.

I believe my hair has grown about 4 inches.  I want to fix my hair different but it looks so natural they way I have it.  Oh well!

I am writing a book, I may have told you, where I put myself as Susan Lancer and it has the people in “Dark Shadows – 1897” except I didn’t specify that date, I prefer 1970 and the stars of “Laredo” and “Lancer” and a casual mention of “Here Come the Brides” characters.  I told Jeanette and made her promise not to tell and she did to my mother not 2 minutes later!

Now a matter of vague importance.  Jeanette and I have been arguing about this since the day we moved into the town house in Montreal.  PILLOWS!  You see we were going to sleep and only 2 of our pillows could be found (we each Jeanette and I have 2).  So I said “I’ll lend you my green one” and she said it was hers!  I swear to you and Messe’s grave (my cat) that pillow was mine and the blue one Jeanette’s.  I finally got tired of it and took the blue one.  But here’s my defence in the packing box was MY blanket, MY satin, blue pillow and my GREEN pillow (along with my other stuff).  Now HOW could her pillow have got in in MY packing box?  Anyways I am so positive it is mine because I slept on it in Winnipeg – Cormorant Bay – and as is my habit I often dream awake and at that time I was “in love” with Peter Brown and I would pretend the pillow was him and kiss it.  It’s true and oh never mind. It was mine. So there.

NOTE:  Oh dear, I was really hesitant to include that last “clincher” but . . . true to the diary (gulp, I am starting to regret that phrase, mantra or what will you).  J  The “book” turned out to be novelette sized and despite plagiarising all the TV characters the plot was pretty good for a juvenile story.  I stayed true to my original story writing as a kid; lots of ghosts, witches and other abnormal creatures.  Shortly after completing it I began several other non-ghostly stories which I eventually blended into what would become a family saga of several generations.  It was much more intense but still rather fanciful (female pirates were in the beginning) and led to my third novel which was a true historical novel set in the civil war era and passing into a western story.  Both novels are about 1,000 typed pages but were hand written first.  I find I can think better with hand writing.  Typing is too noisy and keyboarding is too neutral for me when it is fiction writing.