Say Cheese Before You Die

I've been thinking about writing a murder mystery, called "Say Cheese Before You Die." It is about a young woman, a photographer, who discovers--too late--the man she married is abusive and violent. She wants to leave him but he threatens to hunt her down and kill her if she does. He has money and the means to track her. She's trapped, tortured, terrified.

She decides to kill him. Slowly. Little by little. Every day she takes another step toward murder, toward freedom. She attends cooking classes and learns to make cheese cake, macaroni and cheese, cheese sauce, cheese balls, cheese enchiladas, cheese fondue. She tosses feta over salads, melts cheddar into quiche, and grates Parmesan onto vegetables. Occasionally, for a change, she feeds him Fettuccine Alfredo, with garlic cheese bread, and serves a cheese crepe for dessert. All the while she claims she is vegan, eating only beans, rice, fruits and vegetables.

He never suspects anything while he dominates and exerts his power over her, but then one day he clutches his chest, gasps for breath, falls to the soft cream carpet, his eyes wide and vacant, one hand outstretched, fingers splayed as if he is reaching for one final cheese doodle.

She leans over and tucks a small photo album under him, containing pictures of him eating a cheese dog at the ball park, nachos at the Cinco de Mayo festival, cheese and crackers at the Art and Wine celebration. She strolls into the kitchen, scrubs the cheese grater clean, deletes all the cheese recipes from her hard drive, takes her packed suitcase from the closet in the extra bedroom, and shuffles out the back door to his Lexus.

At a sunny resort in Belize, she meets a lactose-intolerant retired detective who becomes suspicious when he learns her husband has just died and she is showing no signs of grief.

Anyone think this is a good book idea?

Thanks to the following authors

Thanks

It is important to acknowledge people who have made a difference in our lives. It is also important to acknowledge people who have made a difference to our blogs. I’d like to thank the following people.

1. Lilith Saintcrow

Lilith is the New York Times Best-Selling author of a number of urban fantasy and young adult books and is a fabulous, caring person. I don’t have to tell you she is a fabulous writer, because you don’t get on the NYT best-selling list if you can’t string two sentences together to make a reader laugh, cry, or fidget on the edge of their seats. When she talks, people listen. And when she tells people they should read a blog, they do. Immediately. She is the reason “Confessions of a Seven-Year-Old” and "It may seem as though I don't like Christmas" are on my ten most popular blogs list.

Check out her books here.

2. Bill Cameron

Bill is a clever murder mystery writer, who tortures his protagonist with great cunning, while incorporating fabulous bits of Portland into the book. He wrote a guest-blog on here, A Dream to Some, A Nightmare to Others, which remains on my top ten blog list. He is one of the sweetest men I know. On twitter he told of his ukulele lessons, and I asked him to post a video of it, which he did. It was endearingly pitiful. Reminded me of when I took piano lessons in second grade. Oh, no, he was much better than that, come to think of it. Throughout the video, I smiled.

Check out his books here.

3. Linda Collision

I found Linda Collision when I was researching The Pirates’ Reckoning. She writes nautical fiction with a female protagonist and does a ship-shape job of it. Although I’ve never met her, she has been very helpful and encouraging, even agreeing to write a guest-post, Tension and Conflict on the High Seas, which also remains on my top ten blog list. If you liked Master and Commander, or the Horatio Hornblower books, you’ll enjoy her books. Word of warning, however, is to refrain from reading about the surgeon's mate’s shipboard surgery while eating your lunch. It’s enough to make you queasy.

Check out her books here.

4. Carolyn J. Rose

I want to thank Carolyn J. Rose for the awesome guest posts she did for me, Coping with Rejection and Self-torture Techniques for Writers. Besides being a good friend, Carolyn has taught me how to not be a bad writer. Now all I have to do is put into practice all she has taught to become a good writer. Carolyn writes great novels, well worth the read, from love stories set in the 1960s to murder mysteries involving the entire bizarre population of a fictional coastal town in Oregon. Both of Carolyn's guest blogs are in my top ten blog posts, but you'll notice the self-torture one is #1. Why? Because people from all over the world enter "self-torture techniques" into their search engine. Who knew?

Check out her books here.