Modern . . . Crazy Houses
Don’t forget to enter Friday’s giveaway for Jill Williamson’s fabulous YA fantasy!!
~*~
Last week one of the books we got for my kids from the library is called Rotten Teeth. It’s about a shy little girl who never takes anything into Show and Tell because she thinks there’s nothing interesting enough in her house. And yet, as you turn the pages and look at her house, it’s truly crazy. We’re talking pet alligators on the lawn, aliens coming to her father’s dental office, turtle chairs . . . she ends up taking a jar of rotten teeth, hence the title, but that’s not my point here, LOL.
As I read this to Xoe the first time, I nearly started laughing at how this house resembled one in one of my books. The story now known as Love Me Silly features a house owned by the heroine’s best friend’s aunt. It’s one of those houses where you notice something new (and bizarre) every time you look around. When my critique partners were reading this, they got continual chuckles from the things that showed up, too.
But the really funny thing is that nearly every bizarre item in that house came from my personal experience. The plastic pig that oinks every time you open the fridge? That would be a yard sale find that my grandfather thought so hilarious he installed it at his house. It took about a week for my grandmother to decide it was unbearably insulting and ban it to the downstairs fridge, which she didn’t have to get into very often.
The pet tarantula? My MIL had one for years. (Shudder.) Her house was actually my inspiration for Aunt Willow’s, though the character’s is a bit more extreme in some cases. (Only some, LOL.) I still look around and find bizarre things stationed around my MIL’s house regularly. Aside from the complete vintage wardrobe, she has shoes hanging on the walls, confederate soldier uniforms, a random wagon wheel hanging next to an old saddle, parasols, chain mail, manikins, and a talking monster butler that still freaks my daughter out every time she goes out into what we call The Peacock Room. Need I go on?
In my book, this house is in part just a fun backdrop, but it also nudges my heroine into letting loose and getting in touch with her fun side. I mean, how serious you can be when you’re sitting at a table that looks like a hay bale on a chair made out of a saddle? =)
So here’s a question for you–what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever spotted in someone else’s house?
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.