If Give You Give A Mouse A Cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk. When you give him the milk, he’s probably going to ask for a straw….”

That’s what happened to me, but in a dream.

So, I took that morsel, ran with it, and didn’t “return” until five years later.

Hmm? How to make this brief?

We own our family homestead.

My great-great grandparents set their belonging on the land in the 1840’s and said, “das ist gut.” And it was. And it is.

In my dream, the essence of me stared into an old photo. In the frame, the couple turned to one another and smiled. Then, the screen door opened. The farmer stood in the doorway to greet his wife, but couldn’t enter.

And that’s what started the process of writing The Last Bordello.

As written in Chapter Two:

Most nights, I see Papa in my dreams. In a slower-than-life pulse, in a not-so-common four-count measure, he smiles as he grabs the knob of our screen door and opens it to enter. His movement repeats. He smiles and opens the door. Smiles and opens the door. Each time, he never enters. He never falls.

But Papa did fall; collapsed before crossing our threshold into the house his neighbors helped him to build. Four years ago now, all of the notes of Papa’s life faded away with his last breath. A stillness so loud that my ears still burned.

If only Papa hadn’t died.

I’m not living in 1901 anymore. I’m no longer in a bordello, in a lunatic asylum, or attending  a Women’s Christian Temperance Union or Suffrage meeting.

I’m in 1928. So far, it’s the cat’s pajamas. (The Moonshine Thicket– working title)

Dear writers, listen to your dreams!