Featured Book of the Week #6 - Nobody's Home

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People often ask about writing and I am fond of telling them that a story idea is like a bolt of lightning...that you can't run from...it keeps striking you over and over and over until you finish it.

Nobody's Home was definitely like that. I grew up in North Collins, a great little town, but a town where two police officers were killed in the line of duty. I knew both officers, and one of the killers.

I also knew all the kids who had the extreme misfortune of living with the killer.

But I pushed it out of my head for years and years until my beautiful sister-in-law asked:

"You know who I saw in church?"

Then she told me about seeing the daughter of that killer...now with her kids...praying.

And the lightning kept striking me at all angles.

How do you go back to church?

How do you even survive?

Can I write something like that?

A work of fiction based on real events?

I set out.

The book was named something different...I don't even remember the original title. I read every single news story I could find. I talked with people who knew the real killer. I thought about the kids. And then I thought about the kids some more.

What's funny is that I wanted to find a really beaten up home and take a photo of it so I could imagine the devastation...I was out in Central New York, just driving along and I saw the perfect house of destruction. It was in the late morning and I pulled into the driveway of a battered home and started snapping photos. Satisfied, I went to back out of the drive and saw that there was a car behind me, pulled straight up to my bumper.

"What're you doing in my driveway?" A drunken middle-aged man screamed at me.

He was filthy. He was angry, and he stunk to high heaven.

"I'm lost," I said. "I just pulled in to make a call to get directions (before GPS)".

The guy nodded and backed away.

"Get the f&*& out of here!" he growled.

Not only did I have my house...I had an image of a man.

I wrote from there.

Nobody's Home is a great book. It truly is. Perhaps the first great book I wrote, but it wasn't just me...I'm not patting myself on the back...it was a great book...because my editor was better than great.

You have to transition in and out.

You need to sell us the voice as a girl.

You need to make him despicable because he was.

Megan's voice was striking me over and over again...like lightning...as I rewrote.

Nobody's Home won an award at the New England Book Festival.

When the book was done and out I received a telephone call from a member of the real terrorized family.

"Was that what happened?" the family member asked me.

"I have no idea...I made it up," I said.

"Well, you nailed it...we never had the chance to know. He kept us all away."

And in the end...it's a horrific story...but whenever I think back on it, I smile a little.

She was in church.

Comments

Anonymous said…
One of the best books I have ever read. When you are from the same small town and can associate the storyline makes it even better.
17 August, 2014
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