By P.J. MacLayne (Guest Blogger)
I come from a long line of strong women
on both my father's and mother's side. Both of my grandmothers
raised large families without a lot of money to spend, but made it
happen with a lot of hard work and a lot of love. I'm thankful that
work ethic has been passed on to me.
So I guess it's no surprise that I
write my female characters to be strong. Harmony Duprie, the main
character in my new book, The Marquesa's Necklace, has the
rather unusual occupation of doing historical research for a writers'
cooperative, a job she invented. That means she spends much of her
time with her nose buried in a book or staring at a computer screen.
That may not seem like hard work to some, but it takes both skill and
intelligence to track down long-forgotten details of daily life of
years gone by.
The weekly self-defense class Harmony
participates in helps her stay physically in-tune. Of course, she
doesn't expect to ever use what she learns, because nothing bad ever
happens in Oak Grove, the small town she lives in.
Yeah, right. She didn't believe that
anymore after spending a night in jail accused of drug trafficking.
As Harmony tries to put her life back
together, she learns that sometimes being strong means letting other
people help you., as in the excerpt below.
The folded, bright orange paper that
must have been stuck between the screen door and the main door caught
my eye. I almost dropped my laptop bag when I snatched it from the
clutches of a sudden gust of cold wind threatening to send the sheet
sailing. But I managed to hang onto it with my free hand, using my
hip to push open the heavy wooden door.
Curious,
I set down my laptop and purse and unfolded the paper without even
kicking off my shoes first. Totally not like me. I sank down on my
old brown couch.
A
crudely drawn skull and crossbones adorned the top half of the page.
On the bottom half, scrawled in red ink, were the words “You got
lucky this time.” I took a deep breath, picked up the landline
phone, and hit memory five—Detective Thomason's direct line.
I was sitting at the bottom of the stairway, patting Piper, and
practicing breathing exercises to calm my nerves when he arrived in a
squad car, sirens wailing. To my shock, Piper didn’t even growl.
The uniformed cop with him dashed up the stairs, his hand on the butt
of his gun. The detective sat beside me and pulled the evidence out
of my still-shaking hand. He flipped open the sheet, glanced at it,
and folded it in half. His lips tightened into a thin line as he
stared at the crack in the concrete beneath his feet. We sat there,
not looking at each other, until the policeman came stomping down the
stairs.
“It’s
clear.”
Detective
Thomason grunted. “Ms. Duprie, have you met Officer Clearmont?”
I
recognized the face if not the name. I’d probably seen him around
the station. “I’d like to say good to see you again,” I said,
“But unfortunately it’s not.” Wow, I was really slipping,
cranking out a line like that. Under other circumstances, I would
have been ashamed of myself.
“I’ll
dust for prints on the door, but I don’t expect to find any,” the
officer said, his expression not changing. “Except for yours,
ma’am,” he added, acknowledging me.
“And
we have hers on file at the station, so they will be easy to match
up.” Detective Thomason noted dryly. “Bring back an evidence bag
for this too.” He waved the guilty piece of paper in the air.
“Although
I doubt we will find any unknown prints on it.”
The Marquesa's Necklace is for
sale at major ebook retailers.
I can be reached at Facebook:
https://Facebook.com/pjmaclayne
And on Twitter
https://twitter.com/pjmaclayne
No comments:
Post a Comment
Let me know your thoughts! (And if you're having trouble commenting, try enabling third-party cookies in your browser...)