More on Obitch Queen

While working on my manuscript, I've had to do some research--and am still researching  of Obitch Queen. I talked to a man in the sheriff's department about human trafficking in selling babies. My friend called him first--she's in law enforcement--to make sure he didn't think I was some weirdo.


So when he called me in a week I told him we thought perhaps he was investigating me to see if I really was a weirdo. He laughed and answered my questions.

I kept a journal while working at the newspaper. It's funny, I forgot a lot of things that happened when I worked there. Like when our editor quit and we had this obnoxious man who wrote headlines like Downtown Libia bombed. Our publisher gushed about how good this guy was, then called the editorial staff into his small smoked-filled office to tell us we should watch for things like that.

We told him how Mr. Hotshot refused to listen to us when we told him something was wrong.

BTW--Mr. Hotshot advertised in another paper for women. OK so the rest of us had a good laugh. This man wore a dalmatian tie with lots of food stains on it, smelled like vomit most days and had hair that looked like he'd just stuck his finger into a light socket.


 Mr. Hotshot wanted one of the reporters to spy on the firemen. "How else can we find out what they're doing?"

And then I read how we ate at Red's, a local bar with good food--and drinks.

I happily forgot about the guy at the place where I got my weather reports asking me several times to go to his cabin with him, yeah, right. And then wanting me to write a story about how he worked with abused women. So what would I write? That he probably took advantage of those said women?

But there were many fun times. I had three morticians show up one day to bring me gifts. Okay, so they really wanted to check me out. I just hoped they hadn't come with a tape measure to check me out for a coffin. They brought me a wad of pencils because I had to write so much (Yep, in those days we still did some things by hand), a candle holder like they put on top of coffins and a picture frame for my granddaughter's picture. They were nice guys and fun to talk to.

Since I also did the farm news, the other reporters would say okay, what do I really want to know about pigs now?

More later. It's time to go to bed.

I'm back!

I am a sorry blogger, but I'm going to try to get better.

Since I last was on here, I became a grandmother--again! Sterling makes grandbaby number 10. Pretty soon I'll be yelling, Hurricane, Angel, Noah, whoever you are, come here!

Meanwhile, I'm trying to get back into the grove of writing on a regular basis. My latest work in progress is titled, Obitch Queen. Where did that come from? At one time I worked at a small newspaper in Ohio. One of my jobs was to take the obituaries. When you work at a small paper you do everything, from writing the news to layout. Okay, so things today are probably different, but back in the old days...

I learned morticians are funny. I thought they were serious. I learned more than I wanted to know at times. Well, okay, that's not true. I used to ask a lot of questions. They liked talking to me because when they called other newspapers they would hear the reporters say, "You take it! I don't want to talk to them."

They don't know what they missed. One guy would make up stories about the deceased when we talked. Or he would tell me funny things that happened to him on the job. Like what? Like people who called the funeral homes and asked for teeth. No kidding. They really did. They said the dead folks didn't need the teeth and would be upset to learn they couldn't have them. Now tell me how gross that is?

My novel has a lot of things in it from my reporter days--I kept journals.

Till next time--CU!
Dee
Obitch Queen