Reader Friday: Where Are You?

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If I transported you into the current book you’re writing or reading…

Where are you?

What obstacles are you facing?

How are you surviving — by using special skills or by hiding behind the main character? 

Please include title and author. 🙂 

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About Sue Coletta

Sue Coletta is an award-winning crime writer and an active member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers. Feedspot and Expertido.org named her Murder Blog as “Best 100 Crime Blogs on the Net.” She also blogs at the Kill Zone, Story Empire, and Writers Helping Writers. Sue lives with her husband in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. Her backlist includes psychological thrillers, the Mayhem Series (books 1-3) and Grafton County Series, and true crime/narrative nonfiction. Now, she exclusively writes eco-thrillers, Mayhem Series (books 4-9 and continuing). Sue's appeared on the Emmy award-winning true crime series, Storm of Suspicion, and three episodes of A Time to Kill on Investigation Discovery. Learn more about Sue and her books at https://suecoletta.com

42 thoughts on “Reader Friday: Where Are You?”

  1. I’m on a beautiful horse farm that’s been in my husband’s family for over a hundred years.
    My husband put our home on the market without even discussing it with me. He wants to move to a condo. We’ll see about that. I’m calling in the troops. Summoning our far-flung family home for Thanksgiving.
    My special skill is love – for him (though not necessarily at the moment), for our home, for our family.
    Title: Family
    Author: Cynthia Ros McClendon

    Inspired by Dolly Parton’s song Family
    https://youtu.be/-e1nyA23bIc

  2. I’m writing another play, #25, titled “Shake, Willy.”

    Scene: a New York apartment building not far from the off-Broadway theatre district. I’m Willy Hirudo, an actor, a sponger, and ne’er-do-work. My obstacles are (1) a total lack of work ethic; (2) I’m rather obnoxious; (3) I’m currently behind in my room rent, owed to Marissa, my roomie’ (4) I went to a costume party last night, seeking work, and got so blitzed, I don’t know who I am this morning, and (5) I find I can only express myself in Elizabethan English, now. Marissa doesn’t buy the amnesia thing, but takes me to the E.R. (I of course, think E.R. refers to the Queen, Elizabeth Regina.)

    At the E.R., the nurse, as a joke, asks if I’m Shakespeare, based on my costume. I seize upon this notion and claim to remember being the Bard of Avon. Later, to pay the rent, I audition for a modern production of Hamlet under the name Willy Shake. I hope to survive with my special skill: I can play any part in the play off-book, and I know the original staging. But Fred, the nephew of the production’s angel, is cast as Hamlet. I’m hired to coach Fred, and he and I become rivals for the hand (and more interesting anatomy) of the fair Marissa.

    I dash off a new sonnet for her to prove I’m really Shakespeare. Fred steals the sonnet and gives it to Marissa as his own, to show how literary he is. Impressed, she falls for him, but I have a secret weapon.

  3. I’m on a luxury yacht sailing the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia. I’m discovering the “new me” after a serious illness. I want to be independent even though my cousin has told me to look for a shipboard romance. I want nothing of it, but I keep getting distracted by one of the passengers. Things get dicey, maybe life-threatening, and we rely on each other as we try to figure a way out.
    Title: Cruising Undercover
    Author: Terry Odell

  4. I’ve been in Italy, Ghana, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Britain and New York with a Ghanaian Armenian woman, abandoned by her mother and whose father worked for the U.N.. She pulls together the disparate threads of her life after he dies from cancer when she is 13 and she is pursuing urban studies in New York. Aftershocks: A Memoir by Nadia Owusu.

  5. There’s a dead guy on the floor. An army buddy. Shot. With my gun…which he’s holding in his hand. We hoisted a few last night and I have no idea how this happened. Suicide? Maybe, only now the cops think I did it and are about to slap me around.

    I just started by Mickey Spillane.

  6. I’m writing the backstory for the two main characters who will be in the sequel for a medieval fantasy/romance novel I wrote in 2007. I’m in my fantasy country of Teleria (which looks an awful lot like Wales), mostly observing how Emily and Rafe learn to use their magic skills, and how they fall in love (so I can later break them up to set up the sequel).

    Title: Emily and Rafe’s Story (Prequel to Eldala and Black Heart)
    Author: Michelle Gregory

  7. I’m in my own house with my dogs, Colt and Ruger. And I’m in the crosshairs of the Romeo Killer, who is determined to finish what he failed to complete before. You’d think my biggest obstacle was staying alive, but actually it’s convincing my sheriff husband that Romeo has returned from the dead. Surviving? Coping! I’m going to die if I can’t get the sheriff to believe me!

    Haloed, Sue Coletta

  8. I’m at the police station in Briar Creek, on coastal Connecticut. I’m trying desperately to prevent my friend Cassie from being accused of murder. I’m using my heart, my head, and my librarian’s skills to save her and find the true murderer.

    Due or Death, by Jean McKinlay.

  9. I’m Lucille Ellwine, a corrections officer, and I’m on the run. The warden released video to the media that shows me helping a prisoner escape and that we’re lovers.

    If you see video with your own eyes, it must be true, right?

    Wrong. It’s a deep fake.

    I witnessed the murder of that prisoner by another guard. The warden is covering it up while the killer chases me across desolate Montana prairie to silence me.

    I’m surviving on my wits, trying to contact the only people who might help me, investigator Tawny Lindholm and attorney Tillman Rosenbaum. But will they believe me or the deep fake video that implicates me?

    Title: Deep Fake (WIP), #8 in the Tawny Lindholm Thriller series
    Author: Debbie Burke

    P.S. Sue, thanks for the great exercise to force me to write a blurb!

  10. I’m in a small town in Australia during a season of terrible drought. I’m helping main character Aaron Falk and the new sheriff in town, Raco, as they try to solve the horrific murders of a family. It seemed like a simple case of murder/suicide, but we don’t think so. Figuring this out may provide an answer to a twenty-year-old cold case death of a young woman in the community. Most of the people around here think Aaron was involved in her death.

    Title: The Dry
    Author: Jane Harper

  11. I’m in a place called Hillfort, a boom town linked to the oil industry. A bunch of men have arrived and they’re taking over the drug trade. These new guys have to eliminate the competition and need the Police Chief to side with them. Also, the Police Chief and Fire Chief are dirty and are skimming money for their protection.

    The town admin isn’t all bad. They’re trying to keep order the best way they can with a limited budget. But they got greedy over the years and now they might die through this mess.

    I’m using my resume skills to find a new job someplace else before the bikers fight back.

  12. NYC. The heroine is a book editor for a science fiction publisher who helps the FBI catch a group of serial killers who bury women alive. And, nope, to being in this book.

  13. Writing:

    I’m in a modern alternative of Spain where the Muslims were not defeated in 1492. I’ve been living in a school for the disabled for my entire life when, out of the blue, my soon-to-be- queen sister invites me to her wedding. There, I am roped into taking care of the baby princess, and encounter the “mad prince” who reveals to me that he’s behind the murders of his parents and others in the capital. My obstacles include protecting the princess from emotional trauma, wrestling between caution and my training of helping anyone who’s “mad,” and eventually, proving that I am not the killer.

    Reading:

    I’m in De Smet, Dakota Territory in the 1880s. I’m helping my parents earn money to keep my older sister in the Iowa College of the Blind, and at the same time denying to myself that I’m falling in love with the Almanzo Wilder boy with the beautiful horses. My obstacles are dealing with students, some of whom are older than me, putting up with this girl at school who’s hated me since we were girls, wrestling with my dislike of teaching, and wanting the boy all to myself.

    Title: These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder

  14. I’m in Flagler Beach, Florida helping Adrian Stark rescue fifteen teenage girls being held at a compound. Here’s the long line and I’m Shelby Adams, the victim’s sister:
    When a human trafficker captures fifteen girls, the billionaire defender of lost causes must break into the compound and extract the girls. But his plans are thwarted when a victim’s sister has her own plans for rescue.

  15. Writing:
    It’s 1946. I’m Nia Rand, age 41, recovering from two years fighting with French partisans. I’m at my sister’s summer home in the Poconos. My Mexican husband is sulking in Culiacán because the OSS wouldn’t let me tell him where I was or why. A uniformed Army colonel is standing in the living room. He’s the same OSS officer who got me out of Franco’s Spain in ‘45. The same who told me eight months ago that my 18-year-old son was in Nuremberg working with British SIS. Now he’s come to tell me my son is dead.

    Title: A Door Left Open
    Author: Dan Phalen

    Reading:
    Just finished a romp with JSB’s Trouble Is My Beat, an L. A. noir detective collection of shorts. Nailed it.

  16. I’m in hiding at Gaza Station, the secret underground CIA safe house, with Galishnikov, Sa’id, Bennett, and McCoy while the Middle East blows up over our heads. 🙂

    The Last Days by Joel Rosenberg.

  17. I’m in FBI Headquarters tapping the keyboard and watching my computer come alive on the screen. There’s an important memo waiting from Director Croft. Its early morning and my two partners should arrive soon. I clicked it open, and as I read the message my eyes cloud up. I blink and read it again. FBI Special Agent Miller was found dead inside a vehicle that was badly burned late last night. He’d been away for a week’s vacation and just flew home yesterday. Tears escape and slide down both my cheeks. He’s one of my two partners in the Cybercrime, Human Trafficking and Homicide Division. A man who I’ve admired and worked with for five years. A knock sounds on my door. My other partner walks in with a smile on his face. I turn and know I’m going to ruin his day, too.

    I’m on the west coast of sunny Floria writing the first chapter of my fourth book, Dangerous Voyage. Suzanne Baginskie

  18. About one-third of the way into ‘Trust and Treason’, I am Archie Douglas, the Douglas bastard. In 1347, I have just arrived at Holyrood Abbey just outside the walls of Edinburgh where I hope to meet with my uncle, Canon Hugh de Douglas. The door to the abbot’s home opens and my uncle gives me a joyful greeting, glad to see that I survived the terrible loss at the Battle of Neville’s Cross. My cousin the Lord of Douglas turns. His cold stare shows that his greeting will contain no joy.

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