New Story

I'm working on a new story, tentatively titled Disaster at 410 South Elm. It's about Drew Harper who (merely hoping to keep her out of trouble) goes with his sister to a house where her husband’s mistress just might live. But when he meets the supposed marriage-wrecker, Mia, he falls for her himself. Here are the first few lines.

He’d never tried to stop anyone from committing murder before. It was
definitely a nerve wracking business, Drew Harper realized as he sat tense in
the passenger seat of his sister’s six-year old Honda Civic while she blew a
four-way stop and careened around a corner, making the tires screech in protest.

He yelped out a curse and clutched the seatbelt strapped over his
chest. “What the hell?” he demanded.

“I told you not to come,” she growled, her murderous glare fixed
steadily ahead.

“Well, what do you expect me to do,” he retorted. “When I find you
storming out the door with a gun in your hand and muttering something about
killing a cheating bitch?”

The idea came to me after receiving a rejection letter from a publisher, telling me I needed to make my stories more realistic. So, while I was picking up a yard full of fallen limbs, I thought, "What's happening in my own life that's in any way interesting?" I came up with nothing... very typical. Still needing a realistic but engaging plotline, I moved on to other people in my life and hit a major jack pot when I thought of my husband's brother.

Though he's going through a divorce now, at the time, my brother-in-law was still trying to keep his marriage afloat until one evening, he received a cryptic phone message from a woman he didn't know, telling him if he really wanted to know what his wife was doing, he'd come to this bar in a town that was, like, five hours away, and he'd find out the truth for himself. So, my brother-in-law hops in his truck, and goes to find out. Long story short, he didn't find his wife that night. But the next evening, I found myself playing lookout girl as my husband helped load our car with stuff Brother-in-law didn't want his wife taking in case things went south.

And thus came my idea for Disaster at 410 South Elm. I've had more than one sibling go through a messy divorce. So, I can relate to Drew Harper's plight a little too clearly. So far, I've breezed through the first chapter. But now, the story's getting tricky. It's going to be a challenge.