Inspiration for Waterbury Winter
Inspiration for Waterbury Winter
Ordinary events can sometimes trigger unusual results. In the case of fiction writing, serendipity can spark imagination. Waterbury Winter began that way, after an excursion to a drugstore one wintry day.
My husband and I were visiting family in a cold part of the country for Christmas. On December 26th we parked our car in the snowy parking lot and entered the store. We were the only customers. At the checkout counter, the middle-aged attendant asked how our Christmas was. “Fine,” we said, and asked him the same question. His reply: “Well, I was here, and my car broke down.”
The following January, I was casting around for a story-worthy subject for my fiction writing class, and I thought of the man in the drugstore. He had spent a lonely day working on a holiday, and had a broken car to fix. I chose a prompt from a list the class instructor passed out to help the writers get past their blocks: “A tall, thin, man, dressed for the weather, chips ice resolutely from his driveway. The sky is gray and the atmosphere bristles with the sensation that more ice and snow are soon to come. The man thinks that this is going to be his last winter in the God-forsaken climate, and he remembers his failed plan to change everything.”
The first paragraph of Waterbury Winter: “Barnaby Brown winces as his shovel hits concrete. He scrapes jagged ice from the driveway, then hurls it into a pile of snow. The shards scatter, pock-marking the white surface. A slate-gray morning sky bristles with the sensation that more storms are on the way. Barnaby pulls his shabby coat tighter around his lanky frame and looks up. Snowflakes pinprick his face, chilly reminders of his so far failed plan to change everything. He tugs his wool cap over his ears as he lifts the garage door. It’s Christmas Eve, and he vows again that this will be his last Christmas in the house, in this God-forsaken climate, in a dead-end job.”
A novel needs trouble, and Barnaby has it in spades. When he arrives home after work, he heads for the local bar for a few drinks. In his inebriated state afterwards at home, he leaves a window open and discovers the following morning that his beloved pet parrot has flown away. He spends Christmas Day alone with a bottle of Scotch. Popsicle, a yellow-naped Amazon parrot, is a character in her own right. She talks and has opinions, particularly regarding Barnaby’s behavior. To describe her, I drew on memories of a parrot my family had for years, borrowing expressions from her extensive vocabulary.
The morning after Christmas, hungover and depressed, Barnaby searches for something to eat. “A few packets of crackers and two tins of tomato soup. Those will do for lunch. And breakfast? He opens the fridge. Three eggs and half a carton of milk. A chicken. That would have been his Christmas dinner, with the drumstick for Popsicle. Chicken was the parrot’s favorite—she would hold a drumstick in one claw, biting it as she sat, perching on one foot and tearing at the meat with her large hooked beak. ‘Good stuff,’ she would say.”
Finally, a word about setting. I wanted a place that was cold. I lived for several years in Connecticut and occasionally passed through the city of Waterbury. A city with a history, once the brass center of the world, by 2008 it had lost its industrial base. It had seen better times. Waterbury seemed the perfect setting for Barnaby Brown, an artist who has lost his way. O’Malleys, the bar that Barnaby frequents, could be any bar, anywhere.
Putting a story together requires combining different elements, not all of which seem to belong together. In the case of Waterbury Winter, the man in the drugstore, the cold winter, a lonely holiday, and a pet parrot, are all fleeting memories that came together to create the story of a middle-aged man who has lost his way. The details from my own experiences have enriched it, and I hope have made it enjoyable for readers as well.
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LINDA STEWART HENLEY is the author of Estelle: A Novel. Among other honors, it won Silver in the Independent Publisher Book Awards for Historical Fiction and was a finalist for The Eric Hoffer Book Awards as well as for the 2021 Nancy Pearl Award. She
lives in Anacortes, Washington, with her husband. Waterbury Winter is her second novel. Find her online at the following:
Website: www.lindastewarthenleyauthor.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lindastewarthenley
WATERBURY WINTER, Linda Stewart Henley
Barnaby Brown has had enough of freezing winters, insurmountable debt, a dead-end job, and his solitary life as a young widower with no one but his beloved parrot Popsicle. He yearns to move to California and reawaken his long-lost early life as an artist. But new troubles come in threes. His ancient car crashes into a snowbank. Popsicle escapes through a window carelessly left open.
A New York gallery owner offers to represent Barnaby’s paintings—but is he on the up-and-up? All of it serves to shock Barnaby into confronting how low he has sunk, and he vows—again and again—to change. He has a few obstacles, starting with his heavy drinking and long-term neglect of his ancestral home. As he takes steps toward a better life, he re-discovers the value of old friendships and latent talents seen in new light, and finds the courage to consider a second chance at love. Rejoining the mainstream of life presents several startling mysteries he must unravel, with a few mortifying but enlightening stumbles.
A heart-warming novel about ordinary people reclaiming their dormant potential, Waterbury Winter celebrates the restorative value of art and the joy to be found in keeping promises.
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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips
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