Pottermore, More Writing,

Ok, I love that I got in to Pottermore as a Beta Tester, but I have to admit that the truth is that as exciting as it is to find new people on twitter who are all going as sleepless as I am, and all as excited as I am, and all trying to find the clues even after they get in, and hating waiting for the "Game ON'  --  I would rather be anxiously waiting for a new Potter Book.  I am curious about Pottermore, but I want more Potter, much more!

Come on JK Rowling, you can do it.  Write a series about the past at Hogwarts, tell us about the years when Tom was a student, and Hagrid, and Dumbledore taught transfiguration. Or the years when Harry's parents and Snape and Serius and Lupine and on and on.  Or go into the future and give us the world you hinted at in the end of book 7.

Pick up your magic quill and set the tip onto parchment and begin.

Please.

But!!!

How can I tell you to write when my keyboard has bee used exclusively for refreshing the pottermore page and tweeting?  I have a commitment to finish another book in August.  Not a Duffy Barkley book this time, but a book about two girls traveling on the Oregon trail, 150 years apart but sometimes able to see each other's journals in the lapdesk that they both own.  It is a magical box made by the Pharaoh's carpenter.

Why do I need to write it this month?  Because I am signed up to write it during the month of August for CampNaNoWriMo.  A month to write 50,000 words.  Yep, that NaNoWriMo site is where all my novels are conceived.

Let me share the prologue about the box.  From a book tentatively titled, Double Time on the Oregon Trail.  Here you go.

Prologue:  In the ancient days, of the proud kings of Egypt, dwelt one of the truly great minds of all times.  This fine mind was in the body of a common artisan, a craftsman, who slaved to produce the beautiful wooden work which was demanded by the nobles of the Egyptian court.  As he carved, and fitted, wooden chairs, and boxes, and tables, and intricate relief figures of all types, he had many quiet hours in which to reflect upon his thoughts.  This man lived in a world where everything was kept in its separate place.  Each person had their separate role, slave or noble, soldier or teacher.  Each part of life had its own God or Goddess, the sun, the earth, the seasons, even the land of the dead.  His niche in life was to create wooden art, on order.  It was not to think.  But still he thought.

     One day he received a beautiful piece of scented cedar wood.  He thought about how the cedar tree is part of many worlds.  He thought of its solid trunk standing strong in his world.  He thought of its roots reaching thirstily for nourishment into the underworld. He thought of its delicate twigs, anything but steady as they danced on the breezes in their reach through the heavens.  As he thought, he carved and polished and found himself crafting an amazingly plain, cedar lined, box with its slanted black ebony top sliding on and off the base along two perfectly grooved tracks.  He rubbed the box to a smoothness which pleased his fingers and a sheen which soothed his eyes.  He loved the box with is delicate perfume more than any other piece he had ever worked on.  Yet he knew that its simplicity would not attract any admiring glances from the nobles who fed and housed him.  So he set this one piece of all that he had ever crafted aside for himself.

     Over time his thoughts often turned toward his idea of unity between many parts of life.  While carving the stylized forms of many gods, he longed for One God.  While dreaming of the past or wondering about the future, there were moments when his mind jumped with the idea that all times were connected, somehow.  While carving falcons, or hounds, papyrus or Pharaohs, he struggled with the idea that all life is one.

     Sometimes, some little item would seem to speak to him out of its own special power and he would hold it close for awhile, then tuck it away in his box.  A special, Nile smoothed stone, a feather gleaming with a purple sheen, a piece of papyrus paper with hieroglyphs he had never learned to read but could almost understand.

     Sometimes his woodwork went to temples or to the tombs of kings, but the box never left his possession.  The kings he served struggled to find ways to preserve their bodies so that they might live forever and this humble woodworker with the scent of cedar in his skin, for all his grand thoughts never guessed that his simple box would travel farther and hold more of life, than all of his other works put together.