By Barbara Poelle
On Sunday morning at 4 a.m. a man fell off of the roof of our building. Apparently he had been up there imbibing to excess and toppled right off the corner and into the sleepy abyss below. But don’t worry, I didn’t tell this tale to be gruesome and chastise-y. He lived. Oh yeah, he plummeted 6 stories down into an alleyway and onto a pile of garbage where he promptly passed out in a hazy dreamlike state, awakening only to the feeling of a detective shaking his shoulder as he slumbered amongst the detritus of my past week.
So basically, what I am telling you is: I saved a life this weekend.
Well, okay, not me exactly, but my spaghetti squash guts and Windex-soaked paper towels did. Just think about that. What if instead of tofu meatballs and soy yogurt I had been chowing down on broken glass and hypodermic needles? Or what if I had thrown out my cement block collection this week? This man would be dead.
No, no thanks needed. I was only doing my duty as a citizen.
The best part is, the call to 911 was made by some woman who was up for an early shift at work and saw his body go by her window. He seriously passed out in the garbage and was only aware of what had happened after being shaken awake by police. (And I hope she took the day off.) There was a whole investigation then, just in case it was an attempted 187 and not a MGD 64, but no, it was just a lone gentleman with a case of beer and a hankerin’ to see the pretty lights of Manhattan at 4 a.m.
How awesome is that? I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a horrible, horrible happening, and clearly that gentleman needs to attend some sort of meeting, but can you imagine starting a novel out that way? Like, your protagonist shakes himself awake in a pile of garbage after being thrown from a roof. Or your protagonist starts his Memorial Day weekend shift shaking the shoulder of a man who has just toppled from a rooftop into a dumpster, and is thinking, “So this is what my shift is going to look like.” Or, let’s say this event happened to the father of your protagonist on the night she was conceived. Or perhaps the husband of your protagonist on the night she planned to kill him. Man, the list is endless!
I just signed a new thriller author last week, and his novel has an opening line that makes me want to throw a barstool through a bay window, it is so good. I am serious. It isn’t exactly like the happenings of the ‘hood this weekend, but it has that same kind of feeling- when I read it, it makes me look like a large pit bull mix, I kind of tilt my head and I go “Mhrrah?” I have been dying to find a new thriller and I even wrote what I can only describe as a “haiku lament” to author Shane Gericke of Thrillerfest begging him to help me find a new thriller this summer. (His response, also in haiku, was hilarious. Check out Shane at www.shanegericke.com. Hey, it doesn’t count as a shameless plug if it’s not my author.)
But there is always room for more on my list. So if perchance, your protagonist falls off of a rooftop or is thrown through a plate-glass window in the first paragraph, you know where to find me.
