During some down time last night at my regular “pay the bills” type job, (I’m a hairstylist by trade), I was thinking about a book I had started 25 years ago. Yep that long ago. I was at the time getting it ready for the “Golden Hearts Contest” put on by Romance Writers of America. Well when I decided to go back to writing I pulled out all of my old material. That was 4 weeks ago. At that time when I was re-reading my stuff, I was appalled at how weak my writing was then. So I shoved it all back into the box it had been stored in and shoved it under my side desk. Fast forward to last night, I was sitting around at one point on a break when I started to think about that book. How could I update it, could I change its genre of just contempory romance to whats popular today. At first I didn’t think there was anything I could do with it, but then a germ of an idea hit. Something from a few years ago that had been in the news that had kept folks on edge for sevreal years.
You see I had set this book in the trucking industry and the main scene was a truck stop. Different, yes. The plot of the orginal was at best very weak. But with last nights musings, I’m rewriting it as a paranormal/erotica romance/mystry and yes its set at a truck stop.
The premise is: A serial killer is on the loose in the Interstate 80 corridore. FBI Agent Rachel Davis, from the paranormal division, is called in to help solve the multi state killing spree. Shilo Blackburn is a trucking company owner and shpae shifting werewolf, whose drivers seem to be targeted. The Rachel and Shilo meet at the truck stop when Shilo is on his way to deliver the load of one of his slain drivers. He hasn’t been on the open road for quite some time, and the fatigue is getting to him, when he stops at the truck stop in centeral Illinois., where the site of the latest murder is and Agent Davis is there with her team. When an eyewitness sees a strange creature the night of one of the murders, the hero and heroine meet to question said witness, who suddenly ends up dead before they can talk with him. Miles of open road lay ahead of them as they chase and track down the werewolf morphing killer.
So as I continue work on my current project I will begin research on this project, it may be sometime before I get content of this store posted but stay tuned. I am looking forward to the research though, its been 20 years as well having been involved in the trucking industry so alot has changed there as well. Technology just keeps racing along at break neck speed like a Cummins Turbo Desiel engine, it amazes me how fast things change. Why only 20 years ago as I worked at a local resort in the hospitality department, the main building burned to the ground, at the time there was a group of folks there for a small confrence only about 50 people who were discussing cell phone towers and how in 20 years they would be all over the country if not the world. And they were right. The company was Cellular One.
Juls Berghammer 