The origins of this story go back a few years and mostly consisted of a private eye running down a hallway being chased by a demon. It didn’t seem serious enough to to spend time on, but every so often I’d think of another plot point. Even when I’d take some time to really consider it, however, I couldn’t pull the character of the private eye together nor properly fix the setting in my mind.
A couple of weeks ago, however, in a short Facebook conversation with John Bray about private eyes and scotch, I had a burst of inspiration: I would base him loosely on myself, but more capable. (Yeah, I’m actually more of a klutz than he is.) I fooled around a bit with names, finally settling on Robert Fielding: Robert being a derivative of my own name and Fielding because not only did Henry Fielding write what I would consider the first real English novel (I just can’t accept Pamela as a real novel), he also established the first police force in London.
The character of Robert’s blonde helper also eluded me. Although she was crucial to a scene I desperately wanted to include, she refused to be anything other than a pretty cardboard character with blonde hair. As soon as I settled on allowing Robert to have some of my characteristics and background, however, she fell into place. She is, based very strongly on a young woman I knew back in the ’70s.
At this point I really wanted to see if I could write this, but with other, more important stuff to do, I needed an excuse. That came with the February 30M2DoW challenge (and thank you Boom Boom for that wonderful acronym — I imagine it being said as: “Thirty em two dow”).
So now I’m either going to write this thing over the course of February, or give it up as a bad job.
We’ll see which way it ended up going at the end of February.
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Adramelech Defects 