I’ve been posting guest writings from my fellow Level Best Books authors for the past few weeks. Here is a new one by DonnaRae Menard, author of Murder in the Village Proper. And here she is…

While I was lying on the gurney in the ER contemplating how one simple decision added to another could evolve into a six-hour visit for a twisted knee, I somehow switched over to wordplay. Ruminate on this: how come short is long and long is short? In other words, why is the quickest thing you want to say the longer of two words? Also, for those of you that learned to read with Dick and Jane, remember that you started with three, evolved to four, progressed to five, which meant you learned to spell long before you learned to construct short.

Doesn’t that seem odd, to build the small piece before the big one? Oh, look, another word puzzle; small versus big. Hmm, how far can you take this? Miniature versus massive. Children versus adults. Petite versus tall. I’m seeing a pattern here.

Somewhere in here, a nurse slipped into the room and injected something into my arm. Perhaps because I have a tendency to talk out loud. Anyway, my mind switched again, this time looking for the polar opposite. Correct versus wrong. Writer versus edit. Martini versus beer.

I dozed off and spent a lovely forty-five minutes wandering through the pages of a dictionary, being lectured to by a thesaurus, and having Mrs. Mullen from ninth grade English explain that I’d never go far in life because I just couldn’t get the commas in the right place. It seems to be the way of my life that I could run through the forest, mud wrestle, wrangle, and ride, then be walking on a flat surface on a clear day and throw my knee out.

Like a Philadelphia lawyer, I tried to explain where my head was, but I got some pretty odd looks. But I’m not deterred. On a regular basis I meet people who can only see the black and white, huh, even words, where I see all the colors of the rainbow no matter what it is. Is it that people who string words together, see all the shades of gray, and yellow, and green? Does that make it better than seeing in monochrome? Probably not dependent on the situation. Selecting one pair of shoes when you have two is one thing. Building a personal pizza out of a menu full of options is another.

Katelyn Took came home to settle her grandmother’s estate, only to discover not only did Gram leave seventeen cats. But Ruth Beauregard, a childhood chum, had moved in. Ruth was confused, penniless, and abandoned by her in-laws because they believed she had murdered her husband five years before.
Ruth had improved, physically and mentally, but she still lived under the stigma of the Beauregard family’s accusations. Katie believed Ruth was innocent and wanted her to be able to move on and be happy. But to make it so, she’d have to look for dirt under a lot of rocks, and it was looking like someone was going to throw those same rocks back. Hard. She could duck and weave, but could Katie find the truth without getting stoned to death?

Buy Link:  https://www.Amazon.com/dp/B0C6QTN399

You can find DonnaRae and her books on the following social media links:

Website:  DonnaRaeMenardbooks.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/DonnaRae-Menard-103359971477217
Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/donnaraemenard
Bookbub – https://www.bookbub.com/authors/donnarae-menard
Twitter – @DonnaRaeMenard