I think I finally have a handle on making MFD a solid script ready to show. It has to do with taking everyday items and making them dangerous even as I keep building the complications. What's going to be fun is tying it all together at the end. In a marina on The Thames under the flight path of an airport in the middle of the night with no cover and a Mexican standoff happening under the glare of CCTV cameras with only one way out of the place as the cops approach and a secretive killer is out to make a hash of everyone else with two innocents and Ben caught in the middle.
Not asking for much, am I? But if I can pull this off...
What's especially interesting is how an old lady who worked at Sam Houston Book Shop in Houston, when I did, gave me the clue. Lois. She was only about five-foot tall and silver haired. Always in a dress, never pants, never a skirt and blouse, and she walked a bit like a drunken sailor. She died years ago, and I hadn't seen her since 1992, but she's locked into my brain. An old Texas woman, no guff to her, didn't take crap off nobody, working part time to bring in money because her son suffered a stroke while being audited by the IRS for his former partner's business dealings and he was living with her, on disability. Hers was a rough story.
She reminded me a bit of my Texas grandmother, though Nana was five-nine...five ten in her nursing shoes. And her hair was white and fine, and she loved to wear slacks. My youngest niece looks so much like her, it's scary.
Anyway, Lois would come to work, take care of the fiction paperbacks -- restocking, reordering, going over new book offers, returning those that didn't sell -- and make a cup of tea. In a mug. with an immersible heating coil. I was at that store seven years and that coil worked non-stop for six of them. And that gave me the link.
I have a scene where a knife is used to torture a man...and I thought, that's typical and tedious. What could be more interesting? Hmm...burn him with an immersible heating coil. Because those suckers boil water. Fast. My scary flights of fantasy took off from there.
Do I make you nervous, now?
Not asking for much, am I? But if I can pull this off...
What's especially interesting is how an old lady who worked at Sam Houston Book Shop in Houston, when I did, gave me the clue. Lois. She was only about five-foot tall and silver haired. Always in a dress, never pants, never a skirt and blouse, and she walked a bit like a drunken sailor. She died years ago, and I hadn't seen her since 1992, but she's locked into my brain. An old Texas woman, no guff to her, didn't take crap off nobody, working part time to bring in money because her son suffered a stroke while being audited by the IRS for his former partner's business dealings and he was living with her, on disability. Hers was a rough story.
She reminded me a bit of my Texas grandmother, though Nana was five-nine...five ten in her nursing shoes. And her hair was white and fine, and she loved to wear slacks. My youngest niece looks so much like her, it's scary.
Anyway, Lois would come to work, take care of the fiction paperbacks -- restocking, reordering, going over new book offers, returning those that didn't sell -- and make a cup of tea. In a mug. with an immersible heating coil. I was at that store seven years and that coil worked non-stop for six of them. And that gave me the link.
I have a scene where a knife is used to torture a man...and I thought, that's typical and tedious. What could be more interesting? Hmm...burn him with an immersible heating coil. Because those suckers boil water. Fast. My scary flights of fantasy took off from there.
Do I make you nervous, now?
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