The company I employ to send around these little weekly slices of my life has inadvertently deleted a decent chunk of you subscribers from my list of blog followers. If you didn’t get my post last week, that’s the reason. This probably explains why you felt like you had way more free time on your hands, and yet you felt that lingering suspicion that something was missing from your life. You just couldn’t put your finger on it. My apologies for any emotional trauma this may have caused. To make it up to you, here’s a link to last week’s adventure. CLICK THE LINK FOR The one you may have missed
Without further delay, here’s this week’s story, inspired by a prompt generously knitted together by reader Eileen Dover Tichane.
Somebody Needs to Clean This Up
Keith read the latest email and faced his cubicle mate.
“It says the committee will meet bi-monthly. Is that twice a month or every other month?”
“It’s used both ways,” Ida said.
“That’s pretty confusing. So if I were bisexual, would I have twice as much sex or half as much? What if I’m only bisexual bi-monthly?”
“I don’t know. Try it and get back to me.”
“What if I’m buy-sexual? Do I only get it when I pay for it?”
“With your personality, you’re more bye-bye sexual. As soon as they get a dose of your charm, it’s bye bye.”
NOVEL NOTES: Every day, during my brainstorming session, I feel like I’m coming away with at least one or two ideas I really like for Questionable Characters, my first novel that will (eventually) make its way out into the world. Sometimes I come up with red herrings, sending my characters down rabbit holes they just know will lead them closer to solving the crime, only to wind up frustrated at the time and effort they wasted when the lead doesn’t pan out. Some of these are fun ideas that come from that little pocket in my brain that create these “what if?” moments, while I’m pretty sure others subconsciously seep in from my days on the job. Allow me to elaborate…
There’s a term in psychology known as “Confirmation Bias,” where we readily accept information that supports or confirms a belief we have. I know I was guilty of it, and I’m pretty sure most other detectives fell prey to it as well. It’s easy to do because we’re always looking for clues or evidence than support our theories. I’ll give you a real-world case. It was a notorious cold case homicide that had tortured detectives for probably twenty years, and it had been handed down to various detectives over the years like a family heirloom. There were three very different and unrelated suspects who were all considered good possibilities, with various detectives in each camp. Along with an FBI profiler and my interrogation mentor, I too knew who the killer was, based not on physical evidence, but rather on his pre- and post-homicide behavior, as well as the way he matched the profile as the jilted lover. Everything I saw and heard from him supported our theory. We were the poster children of confirmation bias. We were also wrong (as advances in DNA later proved). This is the kind of stuff I’m adding to my novel. Yesterday was a perfect example. Things happen, and my protagonist and his sidekick connect the dots which complete the puzzle. Well, they complete a puzzle, but it might not be the one they’re trying to put together. It’s fun stuff—even though it takes way more time than I’d like, because all I want to do is write. I know—technically, this is writing, but it’s not easy (as least for me) but it’s the only way I know how to tell a story. Well, I (sometimes) know how to tell 101-word stories, but that’s very different, and typically a whole lot less painful.