Category: Writing

Have Mummy Will Travel

While my Mylar balloons guarded my house, I spent the weekend at Mohegan Sun Casino in CT. When I left, I anticipated shopping and light gambling with the slot machines. Ah, but my mummy buddy had a different type of gambling in mind. Dat’s wight, wabbits, I’m talking about the mummy from Atlantic City.

In June, I explored Virginia Beach, including the House of Mirrors, and I saw the mummy’s image etched on the glass. But given the excitement of the two book releases and many balloon chases, I’d plumb forgotten about it. The mummy didn’t. There’s burial ground about three miles from the casino, and the dead don’t rest easy.

Mohegan Sun, built by the Mohegan tribe, has much beauty. At the Casino of the Sky, you can look up and swear that you were in an open building with blue sky overhead. The architects planned it that well. A long hallway leads to the shops, restaurants, and the Casino of the Earth, where a waterfall was built. Near the waterfall, a mountain lion poses on a vast rocky post. If you go to my Facebook page, you’ll see all the pictures of the waterfall, lion, and hallway that depicts Indian drawings and tools. In the corridor, at the last panel, stood a canoe. At its base lay something covered by a red blanket. I’ve posted a photo, and if you look closely, you can make out fingers poking from underneath the blanket. A fellow traveler explained that the red blanket thing was a papoose, a type of bag for carrying children.

Now I did some research and learned that the Egyptians aren’t the only people known for mummification. What’s more, most papooses have an opening for the child’s face. Not this one. It was definitely worthy of a photograph. All the same, I got to thinking about the AC mummy and found an alternate route to the shops and Casino of the Earth.

Between the Virginia House of Mirrors and the hallway sighting, the gambling has begun. I had written “Reunion with the Unspeakable,” a short story about mummies on a previous blog. According to my Mylar balloons, I’ll need to write a book with a mummy character down the road.

I have two specialties in life: respiratory therapy and balloons, so my stories contain many references to them. Having married a history buff, I learned about the Depression and World War II. After growing up in an Italian family, I can make anginetti, pizzelles, stuffed olives, and other goodies. I’ve been to the Italian Market. So when Michael De Stefano sent me Waiting for Grandfather, I thought editing would be straightforward. Waiting for Grandfather is a tragic comedy featuring an Italian family preparing a surprise birthday party for their patriarch.

Ah, but most of the major characters think, dream, and play baseball. They can recite baseball scores from years ago by heart. Yours truly doesn’t know squat about baseball. The best thing to do is to consult someone who specializes in the subject. Instead, I went and consulted every article on Google to see how scores are written. I happen to be literal. If you try to teach me new equipment and mention a part called a balloon, I’d start thinking about my Mylar balloons, and that would end the lesson. So the baseball terminology made no sense either, and that’s not something Professor Google can explain.

My poverty in understanding resulted in some interesting edits on the baseball scenes. Thankfully, Michael had a sense of humor, and he rejected the baseball edits, easy enough to do with Word’s tracking feature. Going forward, if an author sends me a tale featuring a sports-loving character, Michael offered to help with what I didn’t know.

You’ve got to have a sense of humor to narrate the interactions between the Corelli family members. The father, who is a frustrated plumber, uses plumbing analogies when he describes ballplayers. The grand-uncles get into one scrape after another, and their oldest brother, Grandfather, has to bail them out. The story spans from the 30s through the modern day.   

I owe a lot of thanks to the folks at Small Publisher’s Talk, a group on Facebook, for their guidance in designing a cover. I had a rough time with the lettering for the cover until author John Green from the group came to my rescue. With that in mind, I’m delighted to present Waiting for Grandfather, now available on Amazon.