As you probably already know, my latest anthology, Saltwater Sorrows came out at the beginning of this month and I’m trying to celebrate that by sharing a series of blog posts by myself and some of my authors.
Today I’m excited to share this blog by Catherine MacLeod where she talks about what inspired her story, “Glass, Paper, Salt”. This one touches on one of my favourite things — sea glass 🙂
By Catherine MacLeod
I have a silver locket with a piece of sea glass inside. It’s old and the filigree is fragile, but I wear it anyway—I find sea glass enchanting. Most Maritimers do.
It would be hard to find a Maritime home that doesn’t have at least one piece. It shows up in stained glass windows, windchimes, fish tanks, and scattered on windowsills. We wear it as jewelry, give it as gifts, and hang it from rearview mirrors.
It’s not a popular topic of conversation, but most of us have an opinion about sea glass. If you ask, you might learn that the best place to find it in Nova Scotia is Cape Forchu. That the best time to go searching for it is an hour before or after low tide. That the winter months are an especially good time to look. That Souris, PEI, is home to a sea glass museum and an annual sea glass festival.
None of these facts made it into “Glass, Paper, Salt,” and I confess I played around with the ones that did—notably the comment about red being the rarest color of sea glass. It’s not. That would be orange, followed by turquoise and purple. Red is fourth on the list. It’s the most expensive, though, since gold chloride was added to darken it.
The glass in my locket is a deep ruby red. I wore it often when I was working on “Glass, Paper, Salt,” thinking it would be good inspiration. I was wearing it the day I finished my final draft and went to a local restaurant to celebrate with coffee on the patio. The woman at the next table had on a pendant, a piece of red sea glass in a delicate wire wrap. When I asked, she said she’d made it herself.
I said, “Isn’t it funny, that someone went to the trouble of making something so beautiful, and it all just ended up in scattered pieces?”
She said, “Oh, well, isn’t that the way with most things?” and went back to her lunch.
Deep, mysterious, beautiful . . . dangerous . . .
Women and the sea have been tied together in myth and story from the beginning of time. Tales of women being drawn to the sea or being left on the shore, waiting for their men’s return, have been passed down through the ages.
But what mysteries lie beneath the sparkling placid waters? What power drives the wind and waves crashing against the shore? There is transformation and exaltation—magic—in the ocean and women alike. And both know that while the sea gives, the sea also takes.
Sink into the icy depths of the ocean with these stories by: E.E. King; Natalie Cannon; Morgan Melhuish; Paul A. Hamilton; Laura VanArendonk Baugh; Sarah Van Goethem; Adria Laycraft; Dino Parenti; B. Zelkovich; Lisa Carreiro; Lea Storry; Nikoline Kaiser; Elin Olausson; Chandra Fisher; Hayley Stone; V.F. LeSann; Catherine MacLeod; and Jennifer R. Donohue.
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