No fame or fortune but Nanc and I are stoked to try again!
A few weeks after Mother’s Day, Nanc and I retrieved all the copies of PLEASE STAND BY – YOUR MOTHER’S MISSING that hadn’t sold in bookstores, as well as the money from those that had sold, and made our way home to sulk. Obviously, we hadn’t set the literary world on fire. When all was said and done, though, we really had had the time of our lives!
I continued writing my newspaper columns and fiddled around with ideas for a new mystery to write (turns out there were a couple more rooms in the house that needed new papering with rejection slips), but working on my own just didn’t do it for me. Not after the ride Nanc and I had just been on. Not much money, oh but honey, we sure had fun!
Turns out my neighbor felt the same way. After talking it over, we decided that we’d learned so much our first time out of the gate, that we really owed it to ourselves, not to mention the reading world out there eagerly awaiting our next production, to give it another try. But we were determined not to make the same mistakes twice. This time, we were going to very carefully plan our strategy.
Happily, we went back to snatching brief periods of time whenever and wherever we could find them, and played around with new book ideas. While driving our kids to doctor appointments, soccer and baseball practice, ballet lessons and dozens of other excursions, we finally came up with a fun storyline for a new novel that we tentatively titled: WE INTERRUPT THIS FUNERAL TO BRING YOU BACK.
The novel was about an elderly woman who is mistakenly declared dead by computer error at a large funeral home. Only the ruler of this powerful undertaking empire can reverse the mistake and he refuses, realizing that altering the program would expose his real business, which is shipping caskets of cash to secret overseas accounts. When the government cuts off her Social Security payments and Medicare coverage, she is determined to reclaim her life. Gathering together a motley crew of misfits, the 76-year-old firebrand comes up with a strategy to take on the seemingly invincible undertaker. After two unsuccessful attempts to undo him, the “little old lady” and her straggly gang finally hit on one last plan to put him out of business --- for good!
(Next: WE INTERRUPT THIS FUNERAL TO BRING YOU BACK!)
I continued writing my newspaper columns and fiddled around with ideas for a new mystery to write (turns out there were a couple more rooms in the house that needed new papering with rejection slips), but working on my own just didn’t do it for me. Not after the ride Nanc and I had just been on. Not much money, oh but honey, we sure had fun!
Turns out my neighbor felt the same way. After talking it over, we decided that we’d learned so much our first time out of the gate, that we really owed it to ourselves, not to mention the reading world out there eagerly awaiting our next production, to give it another try. But we were determined not to make the same mistakes twice. This time, we were going to very carefully plan our strategy.
Happily, we went back to snatching brief periods of time whenever and wherever we could find them, and played around with new book ideas. While driving our kids to doctor appointments, soccer and baseball practice, ballet lessons and dozens of other excursions, we finally came up with a fun storyline for a new novel that we tentatively titled: WE INTERRUPT THIS FUNERAL TO BRING YOU BACK.
The novel was about an elderly woman who is mistakenly declared dead by computer error at a large funeral home. Only the ruler of this powerful undertaking empire can reverse the mistake and he refuses, realizing that altering the program would expose his real business, which is shipping caskets of cash to secret overseas accounts. When the government cuts off her Social Security payments and Medicare coverage, she is determined to reclaim her life. Gathering together a motley crew of misfits, the 76-year-old firebrand comes up with a strategy to take on the seemingly invincible undertaker. After two unsuccessful attempts to undo him, the “little old lady” and her straggly gang finally hit on one last plan to put him out of business --- for good!
(Next: WE INTERRUPT THIS FUNERAL TO BRING YOU BACK!)
posted by Shirley Tallman at
11:18 AM
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