I haven’t necessarily been posting here recently, but I have definitely still been writing (I swear!). While I continue to edit my novel and brainstorm ideas for my next one, I have been working on a few humorous picture book manuscripts for adults. Some of these I can share here and others, well, I probably need to come up with a pseudonym for those ones.
I have found the structure for the adult ones I’ve recently written to be surprisingly similar to my stories for kids, just with a slightly more mature context. And like many of my children’s stories, a lot of them also seem to involve a discarded, unwanted inanimate object that longs for someone to appreciate it, until it finally finds an opportunity to be a hero and takes that leap!
Anyway, here is one of these recent stories. I hope you like it!
An Old, Tattered Wig at the Yas Queen Drag Show
An old, tattered wig sat alone on the shelf,
Feeling depressed and so sad for itself.
For the wig had spent years perched on top of the head
Of a dignified lady, with hair long and red.
The woman would wear it through opulent halls,
At elegant dinners and glamorous balls.
People would praise her full, gorgeous red hair
That would drape down her back with a feminine air.
The woman was strict and she followed each rule,
And had no time for things that would act like a fool.
So the wig would lay straight and it never would curl,
Or wear shiny barrettes like a boisterous girl.
It tried to impress without taking up space,
And felt safe if each one of its hairs were in place.
But it slowly grew older with each passing day.
Its locks wouldn’t lay but would break, split, and fray.
So the lady found new hair, a light luscious brown,
And discarded the wig at a thrift store downtown,
Where it waited and longed for a woman who might
Love it and wear it out proudly at night.
But the old, tattered wig was ignored by the girls,
Who would choose newer hair or a fun one with curls.
Then one day a gentleman walked by its shelf,
He looked at the wig and then said to himself,
“Oh, this will be perfect! I’ll make this hair flow,
And then wear it onstage at the Yas Queen Drag Show!”
He put the red hair on his shiny bald head,
As the wig sat there panicked and filled up with dread.
“Wait, is this right? Can I go on man?”
Asked the wig as the drag queen sashayed toward a van.
He drove to a club and went straight to the back,
Then drew on his makeup and tried on his rack.
He picked up a dress from the arm of a chair,
And its sequins reflected the old, long red hair,
Which looked at the glitz and the glitter and glam,
The man who now sparkled and shined as a ma’am.
It didn’t fit in with these dazzling displays,
With its tattered red locks and its breaks, splits, and frays.
It slumped down and slid off the drag queen’s bald head,
But she picked it back up and then smiled and said,
“I’ll give you the planet’s most fabulous curls!”
Then she snipped its split ends and she poofed out huge swirls.
The drag queen then glittered her gorgeous red hair
And together they flaunted their feminine flair.
They walked out on stage and the crowd was aglow,
So they served up some sass at that Yas Queen Drag Show.
The queen started dancing and singing a song,
As the wig and the breasts bobbed and bounced right along.
“Isn’t this great?!” asked the boobs to the hair,
As they spun on a pole way up high in the air.
“We are so slaying!” the curly wig said,
But it then saw the lady’s light luscious brown head,
Which peaked through the door as she quickly walked past.
When she saw the red wig, her stern face was aghast.
The drag queen walked over and blew her a kiss,
And the lady jumped back with a shriek and a hiss.
“Oh, don’t be so boring!” the wig laughed out loud,
As the lady ran out to a roar from the crowd.
The luscious brown hair followed right out the door,
And the wig loved the drag show and queen even more.
The audience cheered as they bowed off the stage,
The wig felt so free, like it broke from its cage.
It finally sashayed to its new drag show shelf,
And it slept as its biggest, most beautiful self.