Read this and comment - You could win a print copy of my latest book...
Surely that wouldn't ...would it?
Something very weird happened when I started to paint a room in our new place. Maybe it's because I have ghosts on my mind after completing The Bride's Curse - the first in a proposed trilogy - and I'm more attuned to cosmic weirdness, but - well, here's the tale:
We recently went through the House Move From Hell, but that's all behind us now as we are settled into a sweet little house with 22 acres of private paradise and the huge added bonus of wonderful neighbours!
The house is old - parts apparently around the century mark - and is in need of some gentle restoration. Did I say gentle? New kitchen, new bathrooms, suspect plumbing...yikes!
Still, I've always believed that there are few things that perk a house up like a new coat of paint, so that's been keeping me occupied for a while.One room in particular was very small, dark and dingy with a depressing atmosphere. As it is the first room visitors coming through the sun porch use to enter the house, it was my first paint project.
The first oddity was that I chose a deep bright yellow paint. I don't think I have ever in my life painted a room yellow - it's just not one of my favourite colours. Anyhow, there I was, painting away and I had to admit, the yellow was brightening the room up. Giving it a zing, as one of my neighbours said.
I came to a wall that had a lot of old stuff still piled against it, so I moved everything and gasped in surprise. There had been an old electric heater on this wall, which had been removed long before we bought the house. And in the square on the wall that heater had covered was - yellow paint.
Not just any yellow paint, but an exact match for the paint I had been slathering on the other walls.
Cue: Twilight Zone music....
Strangely, despite being anything up to fifty years old or more, that paint still looked fresh, and when I ran my paint roller up against it, you couldn't see where the new paint started and the old ended.
Further Twilight Zone, please....
Then I was at a yard sale in the nearby village. For some reason, even though this room was to be a library housing our many books, I'd decided it had to have a chest of drawers as well as bookcases.
And there at the yard sale was the perfect chest, a beautiful elderly set in cherry and oak, very graceful if a bit battered. And my eyes popped when I saw the miniscule price - well within budget.
Home it came, and it looked absolutely perfect in the spot I'd wanted it for. So perfect, in fact, it might have belonged there.
As maybe it did. According to another neighbour, the folks having the yard sale once had relatives who'd owned our new home....
Definitely Twilight Zone stuff, yes? I'm wondering if I should peek under the wallpaper of other rooms before I paint them, just to see what colours lie there. Maybe it would give me a clue to what the house - or some long ago resident - would like that room's colour to be....
Now in The Bride's Curse there is a cantankerous, mischievous restless spirit. He's a joker with issues
Maybe my mind was too much on the hidden world of spirits when I was painting that room.
Or maybe...just maybe...the house was telling me what colors it wanted to be clothed in.
I'm pretty sure this is going to show up in one of the Wedding Bliss trilogy stories. I'd love to hear what you readers think - does my new house have a specific taste in decorating and is it brainwashing me? Or am I just overly imaginative?
Leave me a comment for a chance to win a draw of The Bride's Curse when it comes out in print next month from Crimson Romance! In the meantime, scroll down to an earlier blog to read the book's first chapter, or visit Amazon for more details and to read the books brand new first five star review!
Creepy, creepy! :D
ReplyDeleteIt's as though the house trusts you as one would an old friend, to take it back to a time when maybe it was most happy. I think both you and the house will be happy together for many years to come! ☺
ReplyDelete