Who Really Invented Bar-B-Que and, Why Are Buccaneers involved? A Dribble for AOM and Being Thankful.

This is TWICE my posts have not been published on the date and time that I set them for!

Posting the First Wednesday of every month, the Insecure Writer's Support Group, is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh. YOU can sign up HERE to participate.

Every month a question will be posed that may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Remember, the question is optional. You can write about anything that relates to your writing journey.

Let's give a warm welcome to our co-hosts:  PJ Colando, Kim Lajevardi, Gwen Gardner, Pat Garcia, and Natalie Aguirre!

This month's question is: 99% of my story ideas come from dreams. Where do yours predominantly come from? 

My stories have all come from my imagination. Often it's a single sentence that pops into my head, or it's a character that won't leave me alone that sets me on the path of discovering the rest of the story. My novel A Lizard's Tail, is a prime example. I was working for a friend who had a ceramics shop where she made wholesale souvenir items, like pirate mugs and stuff. In our spare time when we weren't busy pouring slip, glazing, and packing orders, we played with clay. One day I made a lizard. One of the guys who helped with deliveries was a funny young man who's name was Marvin. So that's how my little sculpted lizard got it's name. And he immediately had a story to tell. The sculpture was with me many years and I wrote many, many pages of notes of possible stories. Finally, some 30 years after I had made the sculpture, Marvin P. Tinkleberry, in all his vain glory, came into being. Unfortunately, as is the way of things, the little ceramic lizard lost it's battle with gravity and was broken beyond repair. However, his story now lives in print and I think he would be pleased.

Origins: a recurring post in which I delve into the history of a word or phrase.

Today's words are BUCCANEER and BARBECUE:

It's July, what better month to talk about buccaneers and barbecue? But how could the two possibly be related? Places like Texas, Missouri, Georgia, North Caroline, and Tennessee (to name just a few) all think they not only have the best BBQ, but that they invented it. They are, of course, wrong.

Sit back and enjoy the story.

I bet you think of buccaneers as pirates. It comes from the French word boucanier. Boucaniers were 17th century hunters who lived in Haiti (the western half of the island of Hispaniola) hunting wild boar and cattle. A boucanier made barbacoa which is Spanish for barbecue. The boucanier cooked his meat on a boucan which is French for the Brazilian word buccan. A buccan was a kind of grill on which the indigenous peoples (ie Caribs) roasted human flesh and other meats. 

The island of Hispaniola. Haiti on the left,
Santo Domingo on the right. 

Eventually those French hunters must have gotten tired of barbecuing meat in the heat of the tropics, so they decided to try robbing ships on the high seas instead. Thus, from a buccan, a cannibal's roasting pit, we get barbecue and buccaneer. Now, at your next family BBQ see how many you can gross out with a story about cannibals and their buccans.

LoanWord: A word adopted from a foreign language with little or no modification. Today's loanwords come the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, the Taino. They were not the cannibals. Cannibalism has been attributed to the fierce and war-like Caribs, after which the Caribbean is named. However, there is no evidence that they were cannibles. I pronounce it CARE-ib-bee-an as the people were called CARE-ibs not ca-RIBs. Saying ca-RIB-be-an has never sounded right to me. Other loanwords are from indigenous peoples of North, Central, and South American. From the Taino we get: Canoe, Iguana, Guava, Hurricane, Manatee, Hammock, Maize, Cassava, Cay (pronounced kee), and Savanna. From the Indigenous peoples of North, Central, and South America we get: Moccasin, Chocolate, Caribou, Chipmunk, Hickory, Hominy, Moose, Opossum, Pecan, Persimmon, Racoon, Skunk, Squash, Chili, Tomato, and Jerky.

AOM, America's Only Marsupial

Opossum rummaged around in the canoe looking for something to eat. Iguana watched from high in a tree while eating a guava. Opossum found plenty of food but the tomatoes were too mushy, the jerky too hard, the chili too hot. But then he discovered the chocolate.

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Being Thankful

Today I'm thankful for a slight backing off of the heat. 11 days of it being 100 degrees or better was a bit much. The highest it got was 106. We've even had a little much needed rain!

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So, where do your story ideas come from? Are you surprised by the origin of any of the loanwords? And how about those Caribs giving us barbeque?

Introducing...

What, you might ask, have I been doing the past three months?

I spent most of my time away not doing much of anything except reading. Don't get me wrong, I worked on my next book and, in fact, have it at that point where I'm ready to get it formatted, plus the cover art is being worked on. I'm excited about that!

So, let me tell you a bit about A LIZARD'S TAIL and introduce you to Marvin P. Tinkleberry.

Hero extraordinaire.

From the moment he hatches, Marvin P. Tinkleberry knows he is destined for greatness. For one, he has a marvelous, well-groomed tail. For another he can puff out his throat pouch in the most spectacular way. Maybe the other lizards in his colony don’t take him seriously, but he knows the truth. It lives in the marrow of his bones; he’s going to be a hero.

When a feral cat threatens the lives of all who live at Stone Wall in the Garden by the Sea, Marvin knows it’s HIS destiny to get rid of the fearsome beast. Travelling Over the Hill to find help should be as easy as snapping up a sleeping moth. But it doesn’t take long for Marvin to see that the world beyond Stone Wall is not the same as his pampered life back at the garden. From the deadly Sucker Cactus Forest to murdering mongooses, danger lurks around every corner and Marvin will have to decide if he’s willing to be the hero he’s long bragged about being.

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I'll be keeping you posted on Marvin's movements into the great big world of publishing. I can tell you this, he's been waiting a long time.