Twin Switch: Kelly and Mark

Yup!  I did it again!  Shortly after I finished writing “Second Life, Second Chance,” I wrote another story.  Guess what the name of it is.  And for any of you who are interested, I’ll send it out for you to read.

I had no intention of writing a twin switch story.  In fact, I had no intention of writing another story at all.  The only thing I intended to write was to continue on with “The Housekeeper” – that I do hope you’re all enjoying.  But as some of you may know, when it comes to my writing, I’m not the one in charge – the stories are in charge.  I’m only there to wiggle my fingers at the keyboard and see what comes out.  Most of the time I’m just as surprised at what I type as I hope you may be when you read my stuff.  So that’s what happened.  There I was one day, with no intention of writing something new… and my fingers were flying as fast as they could to type the words of this new story.  But that’s the way it often goes for me.  Yeah, I’m strange.  I make no bones about that fact.  Probably strange in many ways.  I consider myself to be proud of it!

When I started this thing, I was kind of hoping for something along the lines of my “Baby Bobby” story.  But I’m afraid I didn’t get that.  Not even close!  In fact the story came out about a hundred percent different than I thought it would be.  I was really hoping for more humiliation in the story than there is, but somehow it became about something else instead.  And surprisingly, I like it better this way.  Yes, there is some humiliation in the story, but that is only part of what’s going on.

I need to warn you now.  This is not a short story.  In fact, it’s a full length book.  For the five people out there who read my “Second Life, Second Chance,” this one is about twice that length.  So don’t plan on reading it in five or ten minutes.  Sit down with it and savor it… like I do.  And I do seem to keep turning to it to read and re-read over and over again.  I guess there must be something in there that I like to make me do that.  I do the same thing with “Second Life, Second Chance” – which has somehow become my personal favorite of everything I’ve written to date.  Twin Switch isn’t quite that high up on my list, but it is way up there.

So what is the story about?  Well, the title says a lot about it… or at least a little of the basics.  Obviously, this is a story about switching around a pair of boy and girl twins… thirteen year old twins to be exact.  One of the little poems I wrote to go along with the story doesn’t really say a whole lot either:

Two teenage twins, one boy and one girl

Looking so much alike, from their toes to their curls

But the spider of fate had them caught in its web

And had other ideas for the lives that they led.

Did you notice the reference in there to the spider of fate?  For a while there, I had this weird idea of doing an entire series of “Spider of Fate” stories.  Who knows, maybe someday I actually will. 

To me, this story gradually goes from simple – to complex… with a hidden agenda.  I’m sure that many of you will figure out what’s really going on in the story as you read it… or you think you will.  But I’m also fairly sure that some of you won’t see it till the end.  So… are you up for the challenge?

Surprisingly, much of this story revolves around the sports of baseball and softball.  As with everything else in this story, that surprised me as well since I never saw it coming.  So if you aren’t that familiar with the sports… and the differences between the two… then about ten minutes of internet research should catch you up with most of what you might need to know. 

In the story, the twins are somewhat athletically gifted and you might be surprised to see how well they play the sports.  But here’s the thing… one of the character’s exploits on the field are based on what my own granddaughter does when she plays softball.  In fact, if anything, my granddaughter is even better!  She totally thrives on the sport.  So when you read this, what happens in the story as far as the sports go, isn’t really that out of line.  My granddaughter just doesn’t have the kind of problems to deal with like the twins in the story have.  But then, what would a story be without problems?  By the way, in no other way are the characters in the story based on my granddaughter or anyone else!  As always, the characters are totally figments of my imagination.

One other little thing about this story.  The parents of the twins may not be perfect.  They probably won’t ever win any kind of Parent of the Year awards.  But they aren’t bad parents either… at least to me.  To me, they’re completely loving and supportive.  They spend a good portion of their lives supporting their kids.  You don’t have to look very far in real life to find parents who are far, far worse!  The parents are simply – human.  And they’re just caught up in everything like everyone else. 

I made the mistake of offering “Second Life, Second Chance” as only a Microsoft Word .docx file.  I had a total of about five people who asked to read it.  So disappointing since I think it’s such a great story.  So this time, I’m offering both Twin Switch and Second Life as just about any kind of file you’d like to receive it as.  Just be aware of the file sizes that will go into your email inbox.  Oh, and I’m including offering it in PDF format because I’ve read that most e-readers will work with them just fine.  I’m afraid I don’t own an e-reader yet so I can’t confirm that.  It’s just what my little bit of research told me.

So since Twin Switch is twice as long as Second Life, here is what you can expect for file sizes in the different formats:

Microsoft Word Document (.docx):  325 Kb

Old Microsoft Word Document (.doc):  741 Kb

Adobe PDF:  1,424 Kb

Rich Text File:  1,017 Kb

Plain Text File:  611 Kb

If there’s another format you would prefer, I can look into it, but no guarantees.

So anyway, if anyone is interested, just email me at siskarensinger   at   yahoo   dot    you-know-where… that starts with a “c” and ends with an “m” and has an “o” in the middle… and let me know what story you want and what format you want it sent in, and I’ll be glad to send it out to you as soon as I can by return email.

Once again I’d like to say a very special thank you to all of you for sticking with me through thick and through thin.  And I do appreciate every last one of you!  A lot!

Have some fun and smile a bit today!

Karen