What was your first story?

~ Lynette Rees ~

Last year at my first book launch, I told the guests how my English teacher used to read my stories out to the class. I was about fourteen at the time. I wrote other stories before those of course, but they were my most memorable ones. Probably because the girls in my class used to beg me to read out the endings if the teacher hadn't got that far before the bell rang.

One story in particular stands out in my mind. It was about a newly-wed couple. What the young bride hadn't realised was that her husband was a serial killer who chopped his last wife up into bits and disposed of her body in a baling machine, so all her body parts were embedded in bales of hay!

Now where I got that story from, I haven't a clue! At that time, I loved magazines like 'Loving' and 'Love Affair' which I read at night under the covers by torchlight when my parents thought I was asleep. Those stories were written in the first person and seemed very true to life.

I'd penned the story about the young bride in the first person, as if I was that woman [not a fourteen-year -old school girl.] Maybe that's what my teacher liked about my stories, I don't know. I can't remember the ending but I know the bride would have come out of it okay. I wouldn't have allowed any harm to come to her. As for that evil hubby of hers -- I guess he's still rotting behind bars!

Today, I'm just as gruesome as ever. Although I write romance, I love throwing in the odd dead body and a bit of organised crime. And guess what? I adore TV programmes like 'The Sopranos' and films like 'The Godfather'. No surprises there.

It's only now in retrospect I realise I've been a story teller most of my life.

So, the question is, what was your first story, the one that sticks in your mind?