I guess I’ve always been a frustrated writer—someone longing to write creatively, but instead mired down writing unfulfilling business letters.
Story ideas come easily to me and quite vividly, but previously without an outlet for me to share. Over the years I toyed with trying to create fiction books, but work, family responsibilities, and fragile confidence held me back. My original creative avenues were nightly bedtime stories for my two now-adult children. I’d ask them to each give me a few random topics, which I’d weave into fantastical adventures. Most of the time my two critics were quite satisfied with the result, although I still recall my daughter’s eyeroll following a story about my inventing an oversized baseball glove that miraculously caught a huge meteor just before falling on earth and destroying mankind. In retrospect, I probably warranted the eyeroll.
When I recently retired from my professional career, which lacked artistic possibilities, I jumped into writing a story from my mental library, choosing the one that most intrigued me.
How many different people have touched, owned and held a single coin? Recently printed coins might only have a few owners, but what about a coin a century old? How has an old coin silently witnessed many lives, loves, experiences, happiness and heartbreak? What if that coin gave voice to and chronicled those events?
The 1921 Mercury Dime in Flying on the Wings of Mercury allowed me to create rich and colorful characters who each possessed the coin throughout the last century. This enjoyable journey has been a great deal more challenging than my imagination could generate.
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