Interviews, Twerp-Muffins and Trees

I did a phone interview the other day with another writer for the Examiner.com.  Here’s a link to the interview: Romancing the Tome.

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Last night it was my turn to put The Bandit to bed.  We were laying in the dark, on the bottom bunk of his bed, giggling and being silly.  I don’t remember exactly how it came about, but I called him “a squeaky little twerp-muffin.”

“Ooooooh, muffins,” he whispered.  “Can we have muffins for breakfast?”

This has been making me giggle for two days now.

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Now that my dad is recovering from his stroke back in March, he’s developed a completely understandable mild obsession over family.  I totally get it.  In the beginning it was quite inconvenient for me and that produced no small amount of guilt.  He wanted me to take on the elephantine task of creating our family tree and I had to write the entire 2nd half of that book to get it to the agent.

As soon as I shipped it off, I began work on the project.  I’m really enjoying it, but that doesn’t surprise me in the least.  Years ago, my uncle did the same for my mother’s side of the family and he took it back all the way to Charlemagne.  I’ve always found the entire idea fascinating.

I haven’t made it that far yet, but I’m doing really awesome.  I’ve taken one arm all the way back to 1100 Scotland. 

My  dad constantly quizzes me on what interesting things I’ve uncovered – and there have been a few.  One poor ancestor is documented as dying at Tyburn Tree in England, the famous gallows there.  I have no idea why – it could have been for anything.  I’ve also discovered my family has been in America for a really long time – the Morris limb of the tree were Americans back 10 generations before they immigrated from Wales.  I’ve traced us to Germany and Switzerland and England but the bulk of my ancestry is coming here  from Ireland and Scotland – from many of the different limbs.  Yes, we are related to William “Braveheart” Wallace but he was an uncle.  My grandfather of so long ago was his brother.  I find this particularly amusing because on my mother’s side of the tree, we were directly related to Edward “The Longshanks” King of England – Wallace’s arch enemy.

The reason I bring this up at all is because it really gets my brain churning over story ideas.

And not just because I have an ancestor name Jehoshephat, but it helps.