Old Stories I’m Fond Of

I’m one of those traditional novelists with a dozen unpublished manuscripts under the bed before the first one sold. I’d had some luck with mystery short stories first and thought I was on a roll... not!

I often tell the story about my first unpublished novel. I started it while I was working at my first law job as a junior associate in a law firm. I liked the people, but didn’t especially adore the experience. My first story? It was a mystery novel about a new associate in a law firm, who found the dead body of the senior partner at the end of the first chapter. Very cathartic! One interesting sidelight is that I’ve heard similar stories told by mystery-writing panelists... all of them lawyers!

The last full manuscript I finished before actually selling one was a time travel story containing other paranormal concepts as well as sci-fi elements--and, of course, romance and suspense. The hero, a physicist, he created a method of time travel that incorporated quantum physics. In those days, scientists proclaimed that, if time travel ever became possible, it would be via black holes in space. Today, they suggest it’ll use quantum physics--so I preceded the current theory! In any event, my story was also a contemporary one, as well as a historical one... well, you can see that it incorporated a lot of genres which, back then, was a no-no. When I got “nice” rejections, I looked around and found an accepted genre that included many of those elements: time travel romance. That’s when I wrote--and sold--my first novel: A GLIMPSE OF FOREVER. I didn’t try to explain the time travel. The heroine simply touched fossils and was transported from the past to the present and back again.

Another of my unsold manuscripts contains a theme I still love. I started it when I heard about how many dolphins were killed in the nets of tuna fishermen, just because they were there. I was upset, especially when I verified, during my research, that dolphins are possibly as intelligent as people in their respective environments. The story never sold, and laws changed so that fewer dolphins are now killed in tuna nets, so my theme would need to be modified--although plenty of dolphins are still killed during fishing and for other reasons I consider to be unjustifiable.

Then there’s the story loosely based on my family history. It takes place in the 1930s and revolves around a delicatessen in downtown Pittsburgh. That’s one I’d love to resurrect and try again to sell someday.

I know that doesn’t add up to the dozen unsold manuscripts I mentioned. There are some other mysteries and romances. Someday I’ll go refresh my recollection and see if there are others that might be salvageable.

On the other hand, I’m always dreaming up new ideas. Some of them don’t go anywhere--but fortunately I’ve also been lucky enough to have ideas that sell. I’ve been working on my second Pet Rescue mystery and will be turning back to my next paranormal shapeshifter story for Harlequin Nocturne soon.

Animal Heroes and Human Decisions

I often let my eyes wander along news headlines when I’m on the Internet checking e-mail. One especially caught my attention yesterday: “Talking Parrot Saves Toddler’s Life.”

Apparently, a youngster was in the care of a babysitter, who’d taken a bathroom break. The little one stuck a piece of food in her mouth and began choking on it. Willie the parrot, owned by the sitter, was in the same room and started flapping and making a lot of noise. He also started shouting “mama baby” over and over until the sitter emerged from the bathroom, saw what was going on--including the tot’s starting to turn blue--and performed the Heimlich maneuver, saving the child’s life.

Amazing!

I also save news articles now and then about other hero animals. And if you just Google something like “dog saves child,” you get all sorts of articles, from pets saving babies from freezing, from snakes and from falling off roofs.

And then there are the articles that chill me instead. I saw a headline today that the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the military and is allowing the Navy to continue to conduct its sonar exercises off the California coast, no matter how much harm is caused to marine life, even intelligent mammals like dolphins and whales--and without any protective restrictions.

Of course I believe in national security. But at the expense of innocent marine life? Not if there’s an alternative. Environmentalists provided potential restrictions that would still allow the training exercises but in less harmful ways, and the court chose to ignore them, with only a couple of dissenters.

I’m appalled!

On the one hand, creatures of supposedly less intelligence than us step in and save people’s lives. On the other, our government allows beings who can’t stick up for themselves to be killed in the name of national security--even while there are alternatives.

I see a lot of irony in that. Don’t you?

--Linda