Thursday Thirteen #114

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

Thirteen Things About My 2008 NaNoWriMo Novel

1. It is set in a mobile home park. The title is Mobile Hopes to reflect the hopes and dreams of these families as they climb or fall off the ladder to the American dream.
2. The timeline of events (except for memories of the past) is sandwiched between July 4 and November 4 of 2008 to reflect the birthday of America and the presidential election.
3. Each family is faced with challenges and crisis that are caused and/or exacerbated by the current economic crisis.
4. At the beginning every family is isolated and the individuals within them as well. Despair rules. Families and lives are disintegrating. By the end they have found hope, courage and a sense of community.
5. It will be woven out of many short stories and vignettes narrated in the first person by each character in turn. Some may have multiple turns:
6. Gerta must move in with her grandson Carl and his wife Lucy after the house her husband had built over forty years before is auctioned by the state for back taxes. Agustus, her husband, died just a few years after building that house but he has never left her side. Is he a ghost? Or just Gerta's vivid imagination? (see a snippet of Gerta's story here.)
   
7. Una and her son Juan, his wife Maria and their four children Querida, Bianca and Raul and Xavier all live in one single-wide two-bedroom trailer. The family runs a roadside Mexican food diner out of a van.
8. Nailah, an Iraqi woman, was given sanctuary with her three children in America to protect them from retribution while her husband works with the American occupation. Their three children are: Emir, Ieesha, and Khalid
9. Hunter and Fletcher are two brothers whose yards are back to back and who have been feuding for over a decade. Hunter is a Vietnam Vet. Fletcher's son is serving in Iraq. Both are alcoholics. They constantly throw trash into each other's yards and invectives over the fence. Cops have to be called every six to eight weeks to break up their late night altercations.
10. Drake is the live-in-boyfriend of single mother Wanda whose two young sons Trenton and Owen are not his. Drake and Wanda grow Marijuana in the shed and cook meth in an RV parked in the driveway. Drake's arms, torso and scalp are covered in tattoos most of which reflect his white supremacist views. He carries an eight inch hunting knife on his belt and loves to pull it out and sharpen it. Wanda's mother who is dying of congestive heart failure has moved in with them.
11. Paul and Velma are a black retired couple in their sixties. They've lived in the park for over twenty years and have been park managers for nearly ten. Paul is dying of cancer. They have three dogs and three cats. There son has been in prison for five years and about to get out but a condition of his parole is that he live with his parents. Their daughter drops her kids off to be watched nearly every day. Velma is a nosy busybody who knows every family and all of the skeletons in their closets--and yet remains well enough liked by all that they keep on 'sharing'.
    
12. Yvonne is a real estate agent whose large suburban house has gone into foreclosure and she and her teen daughter Ivy must move into one of her rental properties in the trailer park. Ivy plays drums. Yvonne has two yappy lap dogs she takes on walks on leashes and occasionally in a neon pink pet stroller.
13. Zephyr is a cat who was abandoned when his master was moved into a nursing home and now wanders from home to home in the park. He is beloved by every family and is one of the catalysts that move them toward community.

That's just eight of the possible twenty-some families. I've got that many more imagined with their crisis and quirks but haven't given them names yet.

OK so that should have been thing number fourteen.

Oh Well. Might as well make it fifteen: I've got 8480 words to go and only three days to do it.

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