Justice has been served

Okay, now that I've returned the hostage and redeemed my ransom, I'm feeling better.

I ought to be doing my homework. I've got to read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry tonight, and another chapter in my textbook. But right now all I want to do is sew and knit and play piano and maybe do some writing. All this reading of young adult literature is making me want to write young adult literature. I've got the first paragraph or so of a road trip/adventure type story, but I want to do something a little more original with it. Maybe modern fantasy, as inspired by the Charles de Lint books? Anyway, it starts out like so:

The first droplets of rain fell like cold pinpricks on my lips. I welcomed the relief from the dusty heat of the desert sun and wind. From my perch at the end of the bench seat in the back of Caleb's brown minivan, I watched through the open door as a blue-tailed lizard, no longer than the spand of my hand, darted between the raindrops that made little craters in the roadside dust and finally sought shelter at the trunk of a tangled Joshua tree. For the past half-hour I had traced the progress of the thunderheads as they built up and slid north towards us with the promise of a desert rainy season storm. Not much else to do after the van broke down.

Caleb had tilted the driver's seat all the way back and was resting with his white cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes. All the doors in the van were wide open, but it was still sweltering inside. Caleb's shaggy blond hair clung in damp curls to his neck. The few tendrils of my own brown hair that had esceped the bun I'd wrapped them up in did the same.

The setting is supposed to be New Mexico, probably in a town very much like Socorro. Or maybe it'll even BE Socorro. I dunno. I feel like my writing muscles have atrophied somewhat; it took me a very long time to get those few sentences the way I wanted them, and even now it's not perfect. I keep finding ways to play with the language, to make it tighter and more vibrant, but I have a hard time coming up with a plot. I can see characters and scenes in my head, but not how they fit together or what the story behind them is. Gah...

As a final note, I'm still looking for a new background picture of a long and winding road, preferrably one that has some color to it. The black and white is starting to bore me. Something sort of pastoral would be nice (no cars). But I don't really have a camera, nor do I take pictures very often, so it's unlikely that I'll be taking one of my own to use here. Anyone have any suggestions?