Discovery

For the past three months I've been attempting to collect and collate my backwash of published fiction--namely the short stories that would fall loosely into the genre of mystery or crime or thriller category.  I have quite a few of these puppies roaming around on my floppy disks, in the piles of magazines in my closet, or tearsheets stuffed into filing folders.

I did make one discovery this past week:  a short story that was published many years back in a mystery anthology.  Funny, how I forget these things so easily now-a-days.  But I really liked this one and can't believe I had forgotten about this old friend.

The title of the story was "Peeping Tom" . . . and like the title suggests, it begins with a guy who gets his thrills from peeping in his neighbors' windows.  Obviously, the guy sees more than he bargained for when he witnesses a murder (or thinks he does).  Creepy . . . but that's what makes for a good murder mystery I think. 

I didn't take the time to re-read this story, but if memory serves, it does have a twist ending to it.

Once I get these stories collected, I'm not sure what I can do with them.  Short story collections are a tough sell these days--indeed, one of the toughest of all. But there was a time when I was cranking out one of these babies every month.  Becky used to ask me: "What are you planning on doing with all of those?  Why do you waste your time?"

But is time ever wasted on a thriller?  Somebody out there has to put the creep in creepy.