Story Vision Board

With Twas in the first round of editing, and scheduled to be sent off to beta readers in about a week, I was planning on next outlining the seventh Scrap This and ran into a major, to me, issue. The plot that is consuming my mind, demanding to be written, is a little later in Faith's life than I wanted. I've tried brainstorming other plots but they won't stick in my head. None of them work because the one in my head has grabbed my imagination and I'm excited to write it...except the when it happens in Faith's life.

Readers have followed Faith in her journey through crime solving and romance and in Altered to Death, Faith is planning her wedding. Book 7 would happen after the I dos. The wedding would've happened off-screen months in advance. And I really want readers there for her wedding. I feel it's important for them, and me, to be invited to the nuptials rather than told in passing. They've been with Faith through some hard times in her life and I wanted them there for this joy.

To solve that dilemma, I'm going to write a short story. I had part of the plot come to me, while other pieces were harder to grasp. I decided to pull everything together, I was going to try a crafty approach and create a vision board for my story. It worked. I don't know if this process will work for a full-length but I'll give it a try.

Here is the "board" I created for the short story.

Heroine on Vacation

I'm rushing a bit to get this blog post done because I've been working on a short story. Actually a new story as the first one wasn't going anywhere because my heroine Faith (from the Scrap This mystery series) just didn't want to participate. Originally, I wanted to title this when your heroine has you on ignore but that was a little depressing. And not quite accurate.

I had already decided she was the lead in the story. I outlined the main elements of the plot. I started writing and after two pages I was stuck. At first, I thought I started the story in the wrong place so I rewrote it. Still wasn't right. I wrote and rewrote the beginning of the story for weeks. I loved the plot but it wasn't coming together. It refused to move forward. All the characters seemed to hover around, doing something yet basically nothing. It was starting to stress me out. There was an approaching deadline. What was wrong?

I stepped away for a day and realized the issue was that Faith wasn't interested in being in the story. This mystery wasn't hers to tell. Once I released Faith from solving the crime, a character popped into my head. Her backstory. How she and the other characters fit and conflicted with each other. The story is flowing and I'm intrigued by this heroine. I don't know why Faith wasn't fitting in the story. All I could think is that maybe Faith needed a vacation.

Kiki Lowenstein and the Missing Gift, Part II

By Joanna Campbell Slan

Author's Note: I decided to challenge myself by writing an ongoing short story. I'm doing this live--and I sure hope it works! I plan to end it around Christmas. In the last installment, we learned that something is wrong with Margit. 

(You can read that here--http://killerhobbies.blogspot.com/2016/11/kiki-lowenstein-and-missing-gift-part-i.html) 

Margit parked her car at a crooked angle in the parking lot of Time in a Bottle, Kiki’s store, and that’s not like at her at all. The older woman is a stickler for having everything just right. So what gives?

Picking my way across the slick surface, I walked to the back stoop of the store where Margit’s car sat at a strange, lopsided angle. The right side was higher than the left. The front bumper of the old Volvo station wagon pointed northwest and the back bumper pointed southeast. Knowing the precision that governed Margit’s life, I shook my head in wonder at the mess she’d made of finding a parking spot.

Three steps led from the asphalt lot to the door threshold. The first was more of a generous platform. Second and third were regular sized steps.

Bending low until my face was even with the back tire well, I tried to figure out what was causing Margit’s Volvo to sit at such an angle. I squinted, trying to make out the shape caught under her right rear wheel. Margit had reversed her car in such a way that she’d run over our trash can and run up onto the concrete stoop. Simultaneously.

I doubt that anyone could have managed such a trick without hitting the back wall of our building. But she had. Since the rear of the old Volvo wagon was nearly perpendicular to the ground, she hadn’t torn off a part of the car. However, she’d mashed the trash can flat.

No prob. I’d planned to buy a new one of heavy duty plastic. The old metal cylinder was rusted and noisy. Even so, geez. What a mess!

I scratched my forehead, puzzling out how she could have done such a bizarre deed. Had she noticed the crunch? The strange levitation of one side of her car? Usually she called me if she was in a pickle. Or had she been…pickled? More and more, Margit seemed to act strangely. Clancy and I had chalked it up to stress. As the holidays approached and our friend’s mother became more disoriented, Margit had become more agitated. Clancy, my full-time helper, and Lauren, our part-timer, had both seen signs of Margit’s waning powers.

“She’s losing her hearing,” Clancy had whispered to me. “The other day, I practically had to shout to get her to come and answer a question for a customer.”

“She’s also going blind.” Laurel had leaned in close to us, in order to add her own warning. “Did you noticed she has two lamps and a magnifying glass to help her with her needlepoint?”

“What is she working on?” I said to them in the lowest tone I could manage. “She’s bent over a project since Halloween. Covers it when I get near. Has she mentioned what she’s doing? Do either of you know?”

“No.” Clancy sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. When posed that way, she looked like an irritated Jacqueline Kennedy. As Clancy aged, she seemed to be turning into the fashion icon that she so admired. Something about the way she dressed or her sleek auburn pageboy added to her classic features and transformed Clancy Whitehead into a duplicate of the widow of JFK. “I’ve asked her what she’s been doing. Margit will only say that it’s a secret, and she’s making it for you.”

Laurel tossed her long blonde hair. While Clancy looked like a sleek society thoroughbred, Laurel could have been the cover model for a men’s magazine. Her stunning good looks and fabulous figure turned heads. If she hadn’t been the sweetest person in the world, she would have been the most hated, because she was such a gorgeous woman. 

Laurel's sigh was lighter than Clancy’s, but equally profound. “I know Margit has had several phone calls from the facility where her mother is staying. They upset her. It’s clear that her mother isn’t doing well. I get the impression that Margit is using her needlework as a way to take her mind off her troubles. She’s terribly private. Especially when it involves an aspect of her life that would make her seem vulnerable. Yesterday she rang up two orders wrong. In a row, no less. The customers were nice about the problem, but it was a real mess.”

We’d cut short our observations because a wave of customers walked through the door. Now as I stood staring at the mess made by Margit’s car, I decided I needed another confab with my friends.

Margit’s stress level was a problem, but we could cope with that. We could cover for her. We could give her more time off, and we could fix her mistakes.

But if she was driving erratically, well, we couldn’t fix that.

In fact, I wasn’t sure what we could do.

**

I'll post Part III next week, here. Please stick around to see what happens--it'll be a surprise to me, too!

Kiki Lowenstein and the Missing Gift, Part I

By Joanna Campbell Slan

Author's Note: I'm going crazy finishing my project for the 2016 Creatin' Contest, a dollhouse contest. But this is National Novel Writing Month, and therefore, I'm also feeling guilty for not doing more writing. So...I thought I'd challenge myself by writing an ongoing short story. I'm doing this live--and I sure hope it works! I plan to end it around Christmas. 

The sight of my scrapbook and crafting store, Time in a Bottle, always gives me a thrill, especially during the holidays. We've decorated our front  window to the hilt. The roof line is festooned with bright lights. Vibrant colors bounced off the pristine snow that had fallen overnight. I hate the cold, but I love the sights when Christmas is right around the corner.

There is so much to look forward to!

I laughed out loud thinking of all the festive activities documented on our calendar. With two small kids and a teenager, my husband, Detweiler, and I will be busy in a ho-ho-ho-happy way. Already there has been a lot of buzzing around, whispering of secrets, and giggling after lights out. The children have holiday fever. Their excitement keeps ratcheting up, as does the noise level. These days, when I'm in my car alone, I keep the radio off and savor the silence.

Slowly, I pulled into the parking lot. The fresh snow crunched under my tires in a satisfying way. I've owned the store for nearly a year, going on two. When my friend and mentor Dodie Goldfader found out that she had cancer, she sold the place to me, on contract. In the beginning, I had many sleepless nights, wondering whether I could make the payments. Somehow, by the grace of God, and with a ton of hard work, I've managed to keep this train on the rails, chugging down the tracks.

Craning my neck, I realized I wasn't the first person here. In the parking space next to the back door was Margit's car, an old white Buick. Margit also owns a portion of the store, although hers is a teensy-tiny share. I offered to buy her out, but Margit says the store gives her a reason to get up in the morning. She's a widow whose mother has Alzheimer's and is in an assisted living facility.

According to Margit, we're her family. I like it when she says that.

She's right. We have only three full-timers. There's Clancy--my right-hand woman, and a Jackie Kennedy look-alike--and Margit and me.

Margit is a seventy-something-year-old German woman, who typifies what the locals call "Scrubby Dutch." "Dutch" being a perversion of "deutsche," which means "German." My friend is incredibly precise. Her desk is a monument to the slogan, "A place for everything and everything in its place." She knows exactly how many ink pens, paper clips, and so on she has. At the end of any work day, she arranges her pencils in their cup with the lead tips facing the ceiling. Her in- and out-boxes are tidy to the point of ridiculous. She wears the same outfit each Monday. Another is specified for every Tuesday, and so on. Every part of her life is exactly that organized.

I drive her nuts.

With great care, I climbed out of my car, a black Lexus SUV we'd recently purchased. The slick surface of the snow threatened my balance. For a minute, the world seemed off-kilter. I grabbed the door handle, blinked, and realized...the world was fine.

The problem was Margit's car.

Not only was it parked crooked, but one side was noticeably higher than the other.

What on earth?

**

Part II of Kiki Lowenstein and the Missing Gift will be posted here on November 27. You'll find out what's wrong with Margit.