Psst… Wanna Help Write a Short Story?

Have you ever wanted to write a short story but never felt that you had the time or opportunity? Well, now’s your chance to at least be part of creating a short story. As part of another writing project I have the first chapter of a short story written and now I want to finish it. And I would like to have your help.

No previous experience or particular expertise required. And you can contribute as much or as little as you would like. It can be in the form of ideas or suggestions or complete paragraphs. You choose. And you can pop in and out as you’d like.  I will give credit on my blog to all who participate and at the end of the story I will award a prize for the best contributions.

I intend to try and publish this story somewhere in print and online through this blog. Feel free to pass this idea along to anyone who you think might be interested. Let’s have some fun and create a group masterpiece. So here is the first page. For the rest please follow the link below.

So add your thoughts, ideas, suggestions, comments. I will be posting this on my Facebook page and you can comment there or just message me. And you can always send me an e-mail. Once I receive the first five suggestions I will write the first few paragraphs of Chapter 2. If I don’t get any comments I will be very sad…. but I will still write the story and try to publish it.

                                            The Parking Lot

                                                Mike Martin

They found her in the parking lot of the Home Depot. Her cherry red F-150 pick-up was still warm but she was stone cold dead. Harrison suspected that the truck had run out of gas. That made making the time of death a little more difficult, but that wasn’t his job.

He looked around at the shoppers and do-it-yourselfers as they pretended he wasn’t there. They had already scoped him out when they were sitting in their cars and SUV’s, waiting for the store to open. They were all curious but it wasn’t the yellow police tape that kept them away. It was fear. This was their Saturday morning routine: get a large coffee and then go walk around Home Dept, maybe look at the new circular saws, maybe pick up a bag of nails. Maybe buy the lumber for their next project. A dead body shook them. Good, thought Harrison. Somebody should be shook up.

The woman was what Harrison would call ‘country-pretty’. Long brown hair tied up in a ponytail, fancy jeans and a faded suede jacket. Small, but not petite and while Harrison could never guess ages, especially for women, she looked to be early 30′s. No sign of children and no wedding ring but that didn’t mean anything these days. And dead, very dead.

Harrison had been having coffee at Tim Hortons and thinking about his four days off when his hand-held radio went off. He was down near Leitrum on a stakeout waiting for a reluctant witness in a shooting to come home. Reluctant because he probably didn’t know who could do him more damage, the cops or the shooter. 

The call had said Hunt Club West so Harrison figured he was probably one of the closest. He flipped on his lights and siren and sped out of the coffee shop parking lot. After twenty two years on the force he still got a kick out of doing that.

When he got to the Home Depot he was actually the second one there. Johnson from South Division was already there interviewing a visibly upset teenager who had been gathering up shopping carts before the store opened. The store manager and a few staff were also outside shivering in their bright red shirts. Harrison nodded to Johnson and did his own visual inspection. “The paramedics and forensics people are on their way,” said Johnson and Harrison nodded again.

He walked over to the store manager and introduced himself. “I’m Inspector Harrison,” he said. “You may want to think about closing the store, at least for the morning. We’re going to want to interview everybody here and we’ll be closing off this parking lot until our work is done.”

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