Fiction Friday

The current hot ticket in Christian fiction is Amish. Anything with a bonnet and/or a buggy on the cover is a surefire bestseller, sez the prognosticators and fiction buyers. For those of us who don't write Amish fiction, we have lots of stories and ideas and nothing to do with them.

Since we finished Curveball, I've been thinking about what to do next. I still have publishing hopes for my other completed novels and I've already posted and blogged everything that has been rejected.

I've been playing with the idea of just writing, kind of free form, very little editing, 500 words or so every week. But I needed an idea. Then I remembered that everyone wants Amish fiction.  Then I remembered that I don't know anything about the Amish culture except what I've seen on TV and in the movies and read. Then I realized I know some Mennonites. Not the Old Order Mennonites, who look and believe similar to the Amish, but Mennonite Brethren, who are still pretty darn conservative.

I decided that I know enough about both the Mennonites and the Amish to write a story. What I don't know, I'll fake. It'll be 500 words or so a week. I have a few characters sketched out. I have a premise.

So, I present:

The Bandbox Hat

I have no clue what the hat is or where it came from. I just figured I could get a buggy and a bonnet on the cover.
So imagine, an open buckboard wagon from behind. A man is steering the wagon. A woman in a white cap is in the back. She has one hand resting on a round hat box. She is looking ahead.



Next week we begin.