"The Sting of the Scorpion"
In
the summer of 1993, between the 4th of July and Labor Day, I wrote a novel about
five days in a real estate office - not a bad little book at that, but written
primarily for the hell of it and when it was done all 244 pages went into a box,
along with a Macintosh floppy disc of the work. It was forgotten.
Last summer Linda Patrucco and I were planning a journey to Petaluma, a little farming town - or once was - a few miles north of San Francisco in Sonoma County. My mother and grandmother were born there, and I know the town well. I told Linda that I once wrote an off-the-wall yarn that took place in Petaluma, and she asked to read it. For some strange reason I was able to locate the box that held the work.
She liked the book, and suggested we get it out to readers and friends. The original Mac disc wouldn't open, even on a newer Mac, so we retyped the book into a Word document, I typed the first half, she the second. I had long since forgotten what I'd written and the retyping turned into some interesting discussions, all resulting in Linda refusing to tell me how the novel ended.
One dilemma was what to do with the 1993 idiom I naturally used - many terms and
real estate procedures (fear not; this is
not a real estate book!) have changed over the dozen years, but we elected to
leave it substantially in 1993 lingo. And, few words or thoughts were
changed from the original. (I had planned the book to sell to the 800,000
Realtors practicing in 1993 and did have some real estate palaver, but in
2006 that which didn't contribute to the plot has been excised.)
It's a light book; friends ask what it is and we just say spy, mystery, humor, suspense plus a few more attributes. We had fun re-writing it, and drove to Petaluma to take photos of some local landmarks where the action takes place in "Rio Verde," the mythical town where the Scorpion lives and works. Our friend Jim Richards, a genius with graphics, placed a montage of all our Petaluma photos on the cover, shown above. The authors are depicted at the right, at five ayem on Market Street at Lotta's Fountain in San Francisco last April 18th, the centennial of the San Francisco earthquake. back cover text
You'll like it. Sundance Books has an adequate supply, Arlington Gardens Books-for-Cooks has a few, and the lady who buys books at Borders, who seems to be somewhat of a self-important pain in the ass, hasn't returned mine nor Jack Bacon's calls so we've written her off. And I didn't even try Barnes & Noble, as I'd like to have it on shelves sometime during my lifetime. In a pinch you can call me; I deliver, (locally!)
Buy one by mail, $16.95, includes media rate postage
karlbreckenridge@msn.com (775) 322-5017