Sunday, June 21, 2020

Remembering 2004

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter
Adobe InDesign document
©2020 Charlene Brown


Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of an annotated watercolour sketch of the Arenal volcano, a watercolour painting of Costa Rica, and a computer collage commemorating the arrival of my grandparents in Banff in 1904.

The last addition illustrates some of my grandmother’s adventures during the years 1898 - 1904.  These adventures are also the basis of the first story in the book I am writing, The ‘Starting Out’ Years: short stories of six generations

I had submitted a preliminary draft of this book to the publisher late last year and was working on some changes they had suggested, when COVID-19 hit. Before re-submitting the manuscript in mid-March, I made some additions to the fifth story, which is about my granddaughter during the years (2017 – 2024) she finishes high school and begins university (a fairly smooth transition, when I first wrote it).  At the time, I also made some adjustments to the sixth story, which covers the same ‘starting out’ years in the life of my great-granddaughter – as she and her friends in the high school graduating class of 2045 make their plans and reflect back on the weird situation in which their parents found themselves back in 2020.  I have been re-writing those two stories ever since.