The other day I was chatting with a friend who’s reading The Deception. She said she wanted to deck the boyfriend who dumps leading lady Carrie in the first chapter. This chapter was inspired by a real-life event.
A few years ago my friends and I visited Seaworld in San Diego. As we walked around the park we happened to pass by a well-dressed young lady sitting on a bench, sobbing her eyes out. A young man, most likely her boyfriend, stood next to her, a very serious look on his face. As we hurried past I realized he’d brought her there to dump her, thinking she wouldn’t cause a scene.
I’ll never know for sure what happened, but that picture stayed in my mind. And you know what happens when something stays in a novel writer’s mind, don’t you? It comes out in a story. In this instance, it became the inspiration for the opening scene of The Deception, but with a different location. This time the lady is dumped at The Arizona State Fair. Her boyfriend also thinks dumping her in public means she won’t cause a scene, but he’s wrong. Very wrong. Dumping someone in public only adds more humiliation to the person being dumped.
Inspiration can from anywhere and everywhere, oftentimes when I least expect it.
MM