Did you like high school? Were those days the best or the worst days of your teenage life? What happened that was significant and what was the worst thing that happened to you?
In Book 5 of The Lamb’s Bay Mysteries, Dancing at Dove Lake, a high school event gone bad turns into revenge served cold years later. This book will be published this spring, but I wanted to give you a heads up about it. I hope you will enjoy it.
High school was not my favorite time, but thankfully I had a great English teacher who encouraged me. I had been writing since I was 9 but was convinced my work should just live in a box in the closet. She praised my work and pushed me to do more with it. So, writing – and reading – became my way of dealing with an environment where I definitely felt unwanted.
Why you ask? Well, my idea of fun was not being a cheerleader or attending school sports events or dances. I was an only child and grew up in a non-sports environment. I was happier reading books – or writing them—and playing my violin.
Yes, I said violin. And yes, I have heard all the jokes along the lines of “is that really a violin or are you carrying a machine gun.” Did I mention I was teased a lot at high school?
We did have an orchestra the first year of high school but the following year, the new music teacher decided a band was more in tune with the school’s environment, so the orchestra bit the dust.
I was also in a small group of students taking advanced courses for university admission. It was a select group and viewed with suspicion by others. So that didn’t help.
Got the picture? Today I would have been called a nerd or worse. Back then, I was the weirdo. And it didn’t help that my mother taught in the same school system and ran the local youth group.
I remember the guidance counselor telling me that one day I would look back on all this, find ideas for stories and use my experiences for books. I thought he was nuts. He wasn’t.
If I want to write about how an outsider feels, I just have to flash back to those days and mine my emotions. And in Book 5, a lot of that comes into play.
I was also an observant person and still am. People watching while having a coffee at a restaurant is still one of my favorite activities. Some of what I observed in high school has worked its way into Book 5.
I first conceived of this book at a friend’s cottage on a beautiful lake north of Montreal. I had the idea. I had the plot, but no characters. And then, boom, The Lamb’s Bay Mysteries came along and I realized that Hilly and Brody and the other denizens of that community were the perfect participants for this book.
Watch for it later this spring.
