Grief Sucks isn’t my first manuscript. I don’t even know what number it is because I’ve started and given up SO MANY TIMES. But I do know that it’s my second completed manuscript.

My first? 😬

It was a gothic love triangle set in a circus about a woman with no memories trying to find her place in the world. I was partly inspired by Water for Elephants. (I can't tell you the other part or else it'll give my ending away!)

It has promise!

But my execution? It was a dumpster fire wrapped in a trainwreck. 🚒

A few months ago I read Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. Then it clicked.

I was missing my characters’ CLEAR wants and needs.

In other words, how can you drive a car with no destination? You can’t and everyone dies or the car runs out of gas.

Beyond that, I picked the wrong protagonist. While I love my sweet main character who didn’t do anything wrong. She’s boring. She’s flat. We can only offer so much attention to someone who has no personality because I literally erased ALL her memories.

But I do think I know who my main character should be. She got a few passing mentions and is likely dead in my current iteration, but she’s the whole reason my main character lost her memories.

She has a story to tell. 🤔

While I want to believe my manuscript is salvageable. While I can see it play out cinematically in my head. I don’t know. It’s really tragic, and I like to write on the lighter side with jokes, laughs, real pain, but happy endings. Maybe that will change one day, and I’ll want to traumatize my readers…but until then I embody this quote:

“The noblest art is that of making others happy.” - P.T. Barnum

How did your first manuscript go? Was it also a dumpster fire wrapped in a trainwreck? Tell me in the comments!

👻KLB

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In fair Kentucky (that’s a lie; it’s humid as hell there), we lay our scene.

ALIENS. 👽

Or better known as the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter. And if you’re unfamiliar with the story, let me do what every teacher told me not to do and cite Wikipedia:

On the evening of August 21, 1955, five adults and seven children arrived at the Hopkinsville police station claiming that small alien creatures from a spaceship had been attacking their farmhouse and that they had been holding them off with gunfire "for nearly four hours". Two of the adults, Elmer Sutton and Billy Ray Taylor, claimed they had been shooting at a few short, dark figures who repeatedly popped up at the doorway or peered into windows.

Some speculate it was owls, drugs, or even a hoax, but it’s a bit hard to ignore some other unusual regional happenings.

Edgar Cayce was born and was a practicing clairvoyant in Hopkinsville. 🔮He had several predictions that came true. ✨

Adams, TN is only 40 miles away from the Kelly/Hopkinsville area. Adams, TN is the site of the Bell Witch Haunting 👻. (Check out American Haunting if you haven’t seen it. It’s one of my favorite movies, but probably not your best source of accurate history 😜).

So, do weird things come in threes? Or is this a part of the country that isn’t quite… ‘normal’? Heck, who wants to be normal anyway!

What weird stuff has happened in your part of the world? Are there really vampires in New Orleans?🦇Does Big Foot teleport through the entire US?

What have you seen? Tell me in the comments!

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