#AtoZChallenge - BLOGGERS WERE CHILDREN TOO! - Y is for Young, Lynda Young, W.I.P it...AND....Yeomans, Roland, from Writing in the Crosshairs.

Hello!


BLOGGERS WERE CHILDREN TOO! is going in for a double whammy post today - Australian Lynda Young and Roland D Yeomans from the US. Both super bloggers with over 1,000 followers. I count myself lucky to call them my blogger friends. I'm sure many of you do too! Excuse the long post (Roland is not known for brevity) but I think you'll be rewarded if you manage to read both entries...


Yesterday was Deniz Bevan...


Firstly, today:

Y is for Young, Lynda R Young from W.I.P. it

I WAS BORN IN:  Sydney, Australia

A cutsie little girl with flowers in her hair

I GREW UP IN: I grew up in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney and moved to the southern suburbs when I was 19 after my parents split up and I went to live with my mum. It's the one and only time I moved. I never actually moved out of home because I simply bought my mum's place from her after she moved out. I have lived here ever since with my hubby and cat.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge - the biggest 'coathangar' in the world
 and the place to see the best fireworks on New Years Eve!
Image - Sydney Rocks!

MY FAVOURITE HOME WAS IN: My current home is my favourite even though it's so dated and is in bad need of renovations. I'm not a big fan of my childhood home because it was haunted with both bad memories and...other things. This is not to say I had a bad childhood--it was brilliant--it's just that some bad stuff happened that will always be connected with the house.

Aussie beach babe

MY BEST CHILDHOOD MEMORY IS: I can't possibly pick just one. There were so many. I have great memories of long talks with my mum, reading and creating artwork, making chocolate cakes, exploring new places, bushwalks and camping. Oh, and Christmas. I loved everything about Christmas and still do.

MY WORST CHILDHOOD MEMORY IS: Hmm, second worst childhood memory involved a book that moved on its own and a nightmarish visitation. To understate it, it creeped me out. lol.

A teenaged Lynda, first day of high school. Cute uniform!

TODAY I LIVE IN: The Shire--God's Country, as the residents say.

RANDOM FACT ABOUT ME: Disaster follows me when I travel. Nothing happens to a place while I'm there, but soon after I leave there's been massive hurricanes, tragic crashes, and other disasters. So when you travel, make sure I haven't been to your destination in recent times ;)

Bio:

Lynda R. Young has been married for thirteen years. She has found success as a writer of speculative short stories, an artist and an animator. She is currently writing novels for young adults. In her spare time she also dabbles in photography and all things creative.You can find Lyn's blog here: http://lyndaryoung.blogspot.com

I hope you enjoyed reading about Lynda. She is approaching 1,000 followers (UPDATE: Past that milestone now) so I know many of you know her. 


Now, here is Mr Mystery Guy...

Y is for YEOMANS ... you know Yeoman as in all those unlucky red-shirted Away Team members on STAR TREK!

I WAS BORN IN DETROIT, MICHIGAN:

     All my memories of Detroit are of knee-caps and hub cabs since I left when I was ten.  I had double pneumonia thrice.  Living in that cold basement apartment wasn't an aid to great health to a sickly child.  Although my first bout of it when the ice storm hit was the catalyst for the tales my mother created of Hibbs, the cub with no clue, who grew into the bear with two shadows.  She was certain I would die that frozen-in weekend and wanted my head to be filled with wonder not fear.

I GREW UP IN ...

Yes, I am the model for the young 
Victor Standish fighting Shamblers in a 
nightmare Detroit.

         My mother married an airplane mechanic, one who read poetry and studied science in his free time.  My family left Detroit when I was ten as I said earlier. The further south we went, the hotter it got.  So I was glad when we stopped in Lafayette, Louisiana.  I was real sure the next stop would have been Hell.

         A year there taught me to say "Sir and Ma'am" and to pronounce David and Richard in really strange ways when they were last names.  And it was not a pretty sight when I said Comeaux for the first time.

          Lake Charles was the next stop.  I remember standing in the front yard of our new home, watching the drunken neighbor across the street beating in his front door (his wife had locked it) with a fence post.

          I looked up to Mother and said, "You know if I had a degree in Psychology, I would bet I would probably understand what's going on there."

           She ruffled my hair and smiled down on me.  "Lots of luck with that."

           Mother was right.  A master's degree in psychology hasn't unlocked the why's of the pain I see.  It has just helped me put fancy labels on it.

MY BEST CHILDHOOD MEMORY:

"There is a garden in every childhood --
an enchanted place where colors are brighter,
the air softer,
and the morning more fragrant than ever again."
- Elizabeth Lawrence.

BEAU GESTE --
     Its first sentence : "The place was silent and aware."  Mystery.  A desert fortress manned by the dead.

     Every French Foreign Legionnaire was standing at his post along the wall. Every man held a rife aimed out at the endless sands. Every man was dead. Who stood the last dead man up?
     That question drove me to check out a book as thick as the Bible.
     I remember sitting down that April 1st with my four junior high chums in study hall. They couldn't get over the size of the book. They looked at me like I was crazy. Then, I told them the mystery.
     Tommy and Gary snapped up the remaining two copies in the school library. Raymond and B.J. (we called him Beej) had to go to the two different branches of the city library for their copies.
     And then, my four friends, sluggish students at best, were racing with me through the pages to discover the solution to the mystery.
     But then came stolen jewels and desert danger. We were hooked.
     Mid-way through the book, I discovered the classic movie marathon that Saturday was going to show BEAU GESTE, starring Gary Cooper and Ray Milland.  The five of us roughed it that night in front of the TV.
     After the movie, we planned on sleeping on the floor of my front room. It would be like we were French Foreign Legionnaires on a mission. We were enthralled. We booed the bad guys. We cheered on Gary Cooper. And we sniffed back embarassing tears when he died.
     But with the mystery solved, my four friends didn't want to go on.
     The solution fizzled the fun of the reading. We all moped. A throat was cleared. We turned around.
      Mother sat with a leather-bound volume in her hands, and with her voice blessed with the magic of the Lakota Storyteller and the lyrical beauty of the Celtic bard, she smiled, "Let me read you five something --
     Mother, in her rich, deep voice, read low like distant thunder :
     "Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan,
a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of true cat-green.
     Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government-- which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence.  Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man."
     She put down the book on her lap and intoned, "That, young men, is the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. Do you want to hear more?"
     Man, did we! And so the League of Five was born.
     For every Saturday night for the rest of that year and all through my last year of junior high, we sat cross-legged on the front room floor and listened to all thirteen of the Fu Manchu novels ...
along with the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starting with "The Adventure of the Speckled Band." I never went to sleep after that without looking at my headboard!

MY WORST CHILDHOOD MEMORY:

     It goes back to Detroit.  Mother divorced my biological father for reasons we shall give Mother her privacy.  He was a charmer.  He persuaded my babysitter when I was six that he and Mother had reconciled.  I was so happy to see him again.

     He drove me to the roughest, most dangerous street in Detroit.  He promised me an adventure if I would get out.  Then, he drove away without looking back once.  I know I watched as I watched stunned.  I ran after him, screaming, "Daddy!  Daddy! Come back! Pleeease!"

     That was the last time I saw him.  Six weeks of nightmare followed.  A street woman in a wheelchair noticed the silently sobbing young boy sitting on the curb.  Her little dog, Tufts, licked at the tears on my cheek.  She was not totally sane.  But hers was a great heart.  The two of them are immortalized in the beginning of my FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.

     It took six weeks for her to overcome her paranoia of uniforms to take me to the closest Salvation Army Center.  They reunited me with my frantic mother.  Hence, my Christmas donationg of all my books' profits to the Salvation Army.  100% of THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH still goes to them.

TODAY I LIVE IN ...

Lonely roads as a blood courier

     In an enchanted world ... if you believe some of my fellow blood couriers at Lifeshare Blood Centers in Lake Charles.  I sometimes get to travel the fabled Creole Nature Trail on my blood runs.  I try not to think of my home burning down around my ears, killing my cat, Pebbles, and Norwegian Elk Hound, Hercules.

My favorite run is along the Creole Nature Trail

      Hibbs, Victor Standish, Alice Wentworth, and Samuel McCord crowd around my keyboard in my new two bedroom apartment.  Each are eager for me to tell THEIR story.  The ghost of Gypsy just yawns and purrs, "He'll do whatever tickles him.  Writers!  Give me mice anytime!"

Gypsy

We're all pretty exhausted, but I thought it was magical learning more about Roland and what gives his writing such depth and at times, pain. Visit him @Writing in the Crosshairs.
 But there's more as we limp towards the finishing line...on Monday 30th...my final blogger childhood post is for Zan Marie. Be sure to come by.


A very lovely blogger, Ciara Knight has her book Rise from Darkness free today only. Click here to download...