What’s the trait you value most about yourself?
The truth is, there is more than one trait. I value my creativity. And I also value my abilities to sympathize and empathize. I value my work ethic and believe in a great work ethic. I deserve many things, maybe, but I only take what I earn through work.
What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?
Right now, my number one priority for tomorrow is making it through the day alive. 🙂
Here is a draft of the cover blurb for Storm Dwellers.
Five teens meet up on South Padre Island to stir up waterspouts, but after a simple spell unleashes paranormal terror on the beach, only Darcy and Lynn escape the island. They have no idea what triggered the ordeal, but soon find that the nightmare has followed them home.
An unfettered monstrosity plagues Darcy, Lynn, and their families and friends, even sending the girls’ fathers, along with police canine, Logan, howling and running for their lives during their own supernatural grapple.
After the sand settles, all they know is there is an evil creature hellbent on taking revenge upon the children of the witches, and it will take more than just Darcy and Lynn to put an end to the entity’s malignant plans.
What brands do you associate with?
I guess loyalty to Brands is still a thing. I think younger generations might be falling away from that. Does the buck stop with Gen X, or do the older Millennials do brand loyalty now?
I don’t feel loyal to any brand anymore, but there are some name brands that I trust. It probably stems from my childhood. Plus, I am a little OCD, and I don’t like change in certain parts of my life. Sometimes I think this is why I hang on.
Quality might be another. But I wonder if even that’s there anymore. Some Brands, I see, got worse and stayed worse. And some got better and stayed better.
The thing is that trust has been dashed by the buying and selling of brands from one company to the other. Sometimes my heart breaks when I see what’s become as some brands from my youth.
Regardless, some of the brands I tend to stick to among the food line are Kraft, Nabisco, Keebler, Frito Lay, and Green Giant. Also Gerber. Of course that’s not necessarily a brand of food, but I tend to reach for it for baby showers, as well as Pampers. Are these products as good as they were when I was young? I think some of them are better, but I do not enjoy brands going from one place to the other. And how many Brands left the United States for other countries?…and they want my loyalty? I don’t like it when American brands are not made in the United states.
And then there are some things that I will not purchase. For instance I like fish – cod, perch, bass, catfish, whitefish. Also shrimp. I will not buy seafood from certain countries. I was certainly glad to see the day where the country of origin was forced to be placed on the package.
Anyway, I’ll leave those places nameless so that I do not offend anyone unintentionally.
Then there are the car brands. While I never considered myself having a favorite brand of car in my lifetime thus far, up until 2022 every single new car (5) and all used cars (5) – with the exception of one, were American brands, union made. And that’s always the way I liked it. But, last year I wanted to buy a new car, and wanted to get back into a sedan. I had a Jeep then.
I checked the American car brands and they did not, at that time, offer the sedan I imagined for myself. I looked and looked. The ones I liked best were way out of my price range. I cringed at the hought of a foreign car brand but felt I should do my research
I ended up with a Toyota – foreign, but assembled in the USA. I’ve never owned a car where the car maker originally started in another country.
I just don’t consider myself a brand loyalist for the most part. Sometimes I just buy what’s on sale. Sometimes I buy store brands. There is one exception. I prefer Kraft cheese. And it’s something I will buy nine times out of 10.
I also used to be a Sony loyalist. I remember my first Sony Walkman, purchased back in 1986-87! I remember holding that Walkman thinking: this is an excellently made product! And I continued to buy Sony’s on and off for decades. But even they’ve changed, I think.
The problem with brands is that they start out with the promises. Promises such as: I am made excellently! I will be here for you forever; you are what’s most important to me.
Then some huge corporation that owns many brands comes along and offers them a flat rate to buy them out. Sometimes because the product or recipe is excellent, and sometimes they just want the stamp out its popularity.
The most important factor should ot be whether the consumer is a brand loyalist, but whether the brand should be a consumer loyalist. I mean, look what happened to Twitter! Yes, it happens there too. Twitter failed its users. And the people who sold that social media product should be ashamed.
STORM DWELLERS
Chapter 4, excerpt
It was quiet again in the SUV. Lynn turned to check on Darcy and found dozing; her head bobbing from the motion of the vehicle.
Lynn yawned. She was sure they had been driving the same road for hours, maybe even passing a few places twice. Round and round.
Something doesn’t want us to make it home, Lynn thought to herself. Damn rooster! Again?
For the third time, Lynn soared passed by a stationary red and black rooster, rooted in place like statue with the exception of a few feathers tousled by the wind.
Immediately after, she whizzed by a welcoming sight, a sign that read: Black Willow 10 Miles. Overcome with a sense of immense relief, her heart rate slowed as her hands loosened on the steering wheel.
“Finally! We’re almost home, Darce,” she whispered as she patted Darcy’s arm.
Lynn and Darcy spent most of their lives in Cameron County, Texas. Meeting in the first grade, they hit it off immediately as if they were meant to be friends.
Darcy walked up to join the line accumulating outside to enter Miss Julie’s first-grade classroom, and her eyes landed on Lynn. She was drawn straight to her, and she crossed the grass like a boss, jumping the line as she bounded up to Lynn.
“Hello, I’m Darcy. I think I know you.”
Lynn studied Darcy; head tilted. She smiled.
“I’m Lynn. I think you’re right.”
A gust of wind blew, shaking the tree leaves. Some children, parents and teachers alike lost their grip on papers and took off chasing them around the grounds. Girls and ladies giggled or hollered out as they fought to control fluffing skirt tails.
Darcy and Lynn watched the chaotic sight on the school grounds.
“I wonder why the grownups are so frustrated and chasing papers,” Lynn said. “They just need to calm down. Let those papers fly away!”
They laughed and had been inseparable since that day.
“I saw your mommy in my dream,” Darcy told Lynn the morning they met. “She sang to me in words I never heard before.”
“Nope. That ain’t right,” Lynn said. “You didn’t even meet Mommy yet. And she doesn’t sing in anything but English, silly.”
However, when Darcy met Lynn’s mother, Angela, she told Lynn that Angela was not the lady she had seen in her dream; she did not look anything like that woman.
“I told you so,” the young Lynn stated.
“Yes, but,” Darcy persisted, “she told me that she’s your mother. I promise.”
Lynn was unable to wrap her young mind around it at the time, but she never forgot that day, and she was always curious about the woman Darcy dreamed. They talked about it a few times over the years, but never in depth and they never wholeheartedly pursued the dream woman’s identity.
When they were older, they searched Lynn’s old family photographs to see if they could find the woman among them. Lynn and Darcy made plans to save money and have an artist draw the likeness of the woman from Darcy’s memory of the dream since she had no drawing skills of her own.
One day, right before they entered the eighth grade, Darcy and Lynn took an introduction to French class at the library.
“That’s the language the woman sang to me in!” Darcy exclaimed.
***
Sybil and Terry Mendez’s mother, Adelina, claimed a lineage dating back to the Texas statesman, Jose Antonio Navarro. Their father, Richard, on the other hand, did not talk much about his ancestry, in fact, he went out of his way to avoid discussion of his ancestry so often that even it left Adelina and her daughters wondering about it. When they would inquire about their paternal ancestry to their father’s parents and other relatives, they always got jokes and snarky remarks in return.
Their father’s maternal grandmother, Paz – who was still alive and kicking at ninety-four, always told them that their father enjoyed rebuffing the ‘ooga-booga’ side of the family.
As kids Sybil and Terry would run around hollering, “ooga-booga!” which in turn made their dad, Richard, quite unnerved.
Copyright 2023 Wanda S. Paryla
Music is everywhere waiting to spring forth charm the senses free the soul express our deepest yearnings I hear melodies in the treetop breezes water passing over rocky streams bell-like laughter of a child’s delight. Music fills our world gift of the angels above. Stop today to listen let it fill your heart with love.
Music Everywhere
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Writing While Supporting Your Mental Health
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What are you waiting for?
Describe your ideal week.
My ideal week is just being alive and well. I’m grateful for every day. That being said, if I could have an ideal week looking out my window at the Smoky Mountains, or the ocean, with nothing to do but write, eat, and ride roller coasters, that’d be great.
If you had to give up one word that you use regularly, what would it be?
I have a terrible tendency to start just about any sentence with the word well. I actually find the word showing up in dialogue in my fiction.
Exploring the World of Writing
Sharing writing tips, information, and advice.
Finding Hope Through Hardship
“All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
whispering life from the future
WANDA PARYLA 
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