Celebrations, January 15, 2016 - Finding Favorite Music...and A Bouquet

This is the Celebrating the Small Things blog hop, run by Lexa Cain and her two wonderful co-hosts L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge and Tonja Drecker @ Kidbits.

Quite a few years ago, in a late afternoon on a Friday, I was driving along an interstate highway and minding my own business when I noticed that a vehicle behind me kept coming awfully close and once or twice nearly did not stop when traffic slowed down.  He was in a hurry, and while he was not ‘tailgating’ me, he was staying very close.  Two times, three times traffic stopped and I held my breath, watching in my rear-view mirror as he closed the gap and stopped…but just barely.

The drive continued, traffic stopped – and the fellow behind me crashed into the rear of my car.  It was a heavy hit, and I was stunned for a moment.  I collected myself reached shakily for the papers in my glove compartment.  Documents that you fill out in the event of a crash.  My car was up against a cement divider.  I had not yet unbuckled my seatbelt.  I reached for the papers, turned toward the door with my hand at my belt’s buckle-

And the divider jumped at me and jerked sideways just as I was about to open the door.

What had happened is that we had stopped, and another vehicle, coming along behind us, plowed into both of us, slamming my car forward and to the side.  If I had stepped outside, as I had intended, I would have been killed. 

I stepped out of my car and saw both men emerging with cellphones plastered to their ears.  They were talking into their cellphones.  I took mine from my purse – where it belonged while I was driving – and called the police.  “Can you see police lights up ahead ma’am?” the bored voice asked.  I said that I was the front vehicle in a multi-car pileup (‘you unmitigated nitwits!’) and they needed to send someone quickly.

So, the accident.  My car was a total loss.  It was a heavy, full-sized sedan, the top of the line.  And its safety ratings were very high, one reason I had bought it.

Well, I wasn’t hurt badly, thanks to seatbelts, the Ford Motor Company and my delay in exiting my vehicle (one reason why I am posting this in the Celebrations Blog Hop).  But one very bad thing did happen: most of my prized CDs were splintered.

A family member gathered them in a bag, and there they sat, in my garage for years.

Recently, I was getting ready to take a long drive up into what the U.S. calls “New England’.  I saw a pile of CD cases sitting on a shelf, and went over to them.  Well!  It appeared that not all my CDs were destroyed.  In fact one of my favorite musical CDs was there, a group of performances by  pianist David Lanz. 

As I drove along, I remembered the CD and put it in the player.  The first was called Christophori’s Dream (Christophori being the inventor of the piano) and the second being a piano rendition of Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale.

I listened and smiled. The magic was there.  It being celebration time, I will share with you.

Christophori's Dream, performed by David Lanz:

A Whiter Shade of Pale:

They certainly livened my drive, and I'll be delving into that bag again.

And the Bouquet:  I happened to see this on a sponsored forum on a vendor of my books:

Does anyone know anything about the next Memphis book - I was told the title was to be KADESH?

How could I not answer?  I wish I had seen the query sooner:

I apologize for the lateness of this response, but I saw your question just now and owe you a response.

Family issues delayed the release of Kadesh. I am working on it at this moment with a projected release date the end of this year. I will be releasing another Egyptian story, set a little earlier than the Memphis Cycle, within the next two months. This is a fable, and is a shorter story. The title is THE THIRTY CUBIT CROCODILE, and you can find information about it on my website, which is www.dianawilderauthor.com

And you can imagine my smile when I read this response and saw that someone had ‘liked’ my post:

Thank you. I'll be waiting eagerly. 

What are you celebrating?