A Further Flight of Fancy

I'm a writer. That's my 'default setting'. I craft fiction in various mediums. And as with all creatives, inspiration comes from all over. Sometimes from out of nowhere, sometimes from something right in front of me. Here's the latest result of Inspiration's whispers:

'Hometown Makeover'

This is the story of a woman returning to her hometown after being away for a long time. Evangeline O'Reilly is a newspaper editor working for a corporate entity, and she quite unexpectedly gets posted to her hometown's paper. Hardly her 'dream assignment'.

But the story isn't so much about Evangeline's struggles to deal with 'going home' or even the emotions involved in reconciling her memories with the realities of a town some decades on. No, this story has a different twist.

You see, not long after Evangeline has arrived in the town, but long enough for her to feel the familiar niggles of urgency make themselves known, the urges to 'make things better' (after all, she was an investigative journalist before she made the transition to newspaper editor gigs), after she's become dismayed at what her 'village' has become (some time-bubble-trapped locale where, while nothing horrible has befallen the place, nothing particularly good has either), after she starts asking questions as to 'Why doesn't anyone seem to care about what this town could be?!?', standing under the local landmark cross high on an outcropping on the Escarpment on a starry night, she makes a declaration. A wish.

"If I won that ginormous LottoMax prize, I'd buy the entire town and fix it."

And so this is 'Hometown Makeover's story; she wins.

Held to her declaration by her best friend (who had remained behind all these years, never having 'escaped' their upbringing), and her three young daughters, Evangeline sets out to buy up the entire downtown, make better what can be made better, and start fresh, knocking stuff down that's well past its 'use by' date. Naturally, there are implications, battles, revelations along the way, because as Bruce Cockburn once told us, 'Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight; got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight...'

'Hometown Makeover' is the story of wishes coming true, but because of everything her good fortune causes her to have to deal with, it's also the story of 'Be careful what you wish for: you just might get it.'