Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Twins and other things by Bonnie Le Hamilton


 

I am a writer, promise, even if most of the writing I’ve done this calendar year has been for this blog.

On the other hand, I am also an avid reader, and so far this year, I’ve read quite a number of books, which for me is enormous because I’m such a slow reader.

Though I have started working on my Sci-Fi again. And no, I don’t mean my sort of Sci-Fi Contemporary Romance, I mean my epic war story Sci-Fi, which is looking to be as big as Konnie’s epic war story Sci-Fi. And believe it or not, the only things those two stories have in common is they are Sci-Fi, they are about war, and their writers are mirror twins.

Oh, I almost forgot, we both have characters in our stories who are identical twins. But who can blame us for having twins in our stories? After all, we know a lot about twins.

Actually, I have both identical and fraternal twins in mine, though technically one of the fraternal twins died before my story begins. The heroine is taking care of her dead twin’s children at the start of my story.

In Konnie’s story, one of her identical twins is hiding just how smart he is, while most of the people around him consider his brother the better catch. In her story, Mr. Smarty-pants worked out a solution to what he considered a minor flaw in their ships engines and in the process eliminated a major disadvantage they had against their enemy, all while Mr. Supposedly-a-good-catch has to deal with more than one mighty big blow to his ego and do a whole lot of growing up.

In mine, what I’ve written so far, the hero and heroine are suffering from the delusion that their twins are better. He thinks his twin is smarter, wiser, and craftier, while she thinks her dead twin is better looking, though she also doesn’t consider all the things she can make means she’s gifted with talent, she considers everything she can do as just everyday stuff. She thinks she’s average.

So, I guess we have that in common in our stories too. We both have sets of twins that have very different personalities. Then again, we know from experience that even twins with a lot in common can have very different personalities.

We are a prime example of that.

I’m known for my temper.

When Konnie loses it; duck for cover! Better yet, pray she’s not mad at you!

The last time I saw her throw a snit, I scurried out of the house as fast as I could and stayed away for a couple of hours just to avoid her laying into me too.

And I think I’ve already mentioned that my (normally) gentle, easy-going twin has used a swear word a grand total of once, even if her kids insist, she never swears.

Once in fifty plus years is not never.

I can’t say the same.

There was a time when I made liberal use of such language. Right up until an English teacher told me that using swear words denotes a minuscule vocabulary.

Anyway, it got to me, because even way back then, I didn’t have a small vocabulary. Thanks to our big sister, nicknamed Dictionary, neither of us has ever had a small vocabulary.

Another difference in us is the men we picked to marry. My dearly departed husband once said he only got along with Jerry because he was married to my twin.

In other words, he forced himself to keep a civil tongue while around Jerry because of Konnie and me.

But Jerry drove Tom up the wall, and he could only stand so much of him before he had to get away from Jerry’s company fast! That is mostly because of how outgoing, and talkative Jerry is, but it also extends to the very different interests and hobbies.

Yeah, those two were like night and day. The only thing they had in common was marrying us.

In fact, Tom was a foot taller than me while Jerry is lucky he found a woman shorter than him to marry. Actually, he managed to find a wife so short that her standing next to him makes him look tall!

While me standing next to my husband would only accentuate how short I am.

And don’t think it hasn’t escaped us that our husbands are Tom and Jerry. We got that a long time ago. After I got over calling her nuts for planning to marry a Navy guy despite my four years of experience married to one.

And let’s not get into our pets or the difference in noise levels in our homes.

Anyway, happy writing everyone!

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