Short-Shorts: How a group assignment became a promotion tool
Short-Shorts: How a group assignment became a
promotion tool
By A. R. Grobbo
Some
years ago a member of my writers’ group came up with an idea for a story that
he put to us as a homework assignment: a funeral director conducts a free
burial to atone for a mistake. I came up
with a plot that would suit my chief sleuth, Gloria Trevisi, to a T (for
Trevisi, of course). I took inspiration
from a news story, and away it ran.
The
result was “the Funeral of Homer Snape”, a single-scene suspense, and since we
try to keep our writers’ group assignments reasonably short, it was barely a
few pages of type, a shade over 1,500 words.
As a homework submission to our group, it worked beautifully… so
beautifully I began to consider its possibilities. If I submitted it with success to an
anthology it would rub shoulders with some interesting offerings from other
authors, many more famous than I am. I looked
about; the two anthologies available at the time were unsuitable. One wanted something supernatural; the other
was looking for a Toronto
city setting.
The
Gloria Trevisi Mysteries are neither; they are soft-boiled, cozy-type mysteries
with a rural theme. Peaceful? Uh uh.
Beneath the calm veneer of family reunions, potlucks and strawberry
socials lies dysfunction, deceit and violence. Grounded in cool reality, the series follows
the rhythms of the seasons of farming, and the hectic pace of a weekly
newspaper.
Marilyn’s
“Tempe” might admire Gloria; a city slicker who has lost her corporate job due
to an economic downturn, she has taken the first job available to her, in a
small farming community in southwestern Ontario, settled in a rented farmhouse
with a dicey septic bed, and made the best of being the only Italian-Canadian
in a community of solid British Scots-Irish stock.
Gloria
is a far cry from savvy PI-in-training Sydra Smart, but author Sylvia Dickey Smith
invited mystery writers with strong female protagonists to send her an
ultra-short story for her blog. I did it,
and guest-appeared. Fun, and easy! A couple of other authors offered to post it
as well, and the story became a bit of a traveler, visiting sites with me, kind
of like a performing pet.
Okay,
I’m giving away my creation. This,
however, is an ultra-short taster, kind of like a cracker with a special
antipasto on it that is sometimes handed out at the supermarket to entice
people to buy a product. If you like the
flavor, you just might buy, right?
I’m
not sure how many author sites carry “Homer Snape” at the moment. It was also offered as a freebie on the
Digital Book Shop and enjoyed several downloads. Then I heard about CommuterLit.com, a site
that collects short bits of prose and poetry that can be read by train-riders
or car-poolers on their iPhones on their way to work. I thought this was a great idea. The wonderful people at CommuterLit posted
it, and also posted excerpts from my mystery series as new books were released
by Double Dragon Publishing.
From
homework to an online free piece of fiction… Does it work as a promotional
tool? I’m honestly not sure. But I don’t see a downside.
Cheerio all…
Anne
Bio:
A.R. GROBBO
Originally
from Quebec, Anne Grobbo spent a number of
years working as a news reporter and community editor on suburban newspapers in
the Toronto area, and later as a business
writer for a large international corporation.
For years she combined career with further education, studying piano
performance part-time and taking evening courses at University of Guelph.
A few years later,
she began to write the first of the “Gloria Trevisi” mysteries, set in rural Ontario and featuring an editor of a rural weekly
newspaper. Anne describes her sleuth as
an imaginary “daughter”, a character who shares the author’s love of music and
respect for the written word, along with her husband’s Italian work ethic and
strong family values.
“Why
not?” she says. “As a teenager I devoured
my parents’ paperbacks, cozy mysteries, spy thrillers, romantic suspense,
historic fiction… and I wanted to create something that wouldn’t embarrass a
mom who found her fourteen-year-old daughter perusing her bookshelf. I write for adults, but I think a young adult
reader would get a kick out of this series.”
The
first, Rural Sprawl, was released by LTD Books in 2005. After that publisher’s closing was accepted
and re-released the following year by Double Dragon Publishing, followed by the
second, Dog in a Manger.
Grobbo
is a member of Crime Writers of Canada, and is an active participant in Ink and
Cookies, a local writers’ group where she finds loads of inspiration. She has made regular appearances at Port
Elgin’s Authors in August as participant and as a workshop facilitator. Her sixth Gloria Trevisi mystery Suitable
Fate, was released last year.
A.R.
Grobbo lives in a century home in southwestern Ontario
with husband, border collie, and cats.
Surrounded by some of the best farmland on the continent, she teaches
piano, keeps bees, dreams up mystery plots, and vows that someday, when time
permits, she will finish her degree in piano performance. Find out more about this author at her
personal website, www.angrobo.com.
* * *
Website: www.angrobo.com
Book Blurbs:
Rural Sprawl:
Something
smells in the rural backwater of Plattsford,
Ontario...besides Gloria
Trevisi’s septic bed. A local
politician-turned-developer is found dead in his own future industrial
park. As editor of Plattsford’s local
paper, Gloria’s mission is to sort through a maze of local gossip, delve behind
the polite facade of rural society, and discover the truth, preferably before
her news deadline.
But it
won’t be easy if she’s in jail…
One Woman’s Poison:
Canned preserves are killing the
locals, a woman’s high school diary contains a deadly secret from 40 years
past, and Gloria Trevisi is about to face the worst two weeks of her life as
she faces down a few surprises, including a murderer… and even worse, a former
lover.
Comments
Madeline
Anne (in case Google fails to identify me again)