Often people ask me how I come up with ideas. Ideas are
always zooming around authors, all they have to do is grab onto one that
intrigues them. The idea for BILLBOARD
COP didn't come from a billboard. I was sitting
in Aina Haina parking lot in Honolulu watching cars come and go while waiting
for a friend to mail a letter. A sleek
black Porsche pulled into the space beside me.
A well-groomed man jumped out dressed in a designer suit and strode to a
faded, dented Ford and placed a business card under the windshield wiper. He stood a moment, removed card and after
another hesitation he put it back. At once my writer's mind started playing the
what if game. What if I was seeing the
dance of an illicit love affair. Or was
I watching an intrigue and he was leaving instructions for the hit person
regarding whom to take out. Was a woman
arranging to have her husband killed or vice versa? Ideas and stories began to
swirl in my mind.
That was the weekend I was flying to Boston on a business
trip, a place where the Boston strangler romped and somehow the change of
location sent my mind in another direction and the card became a billboard.
Hence, I came up with the following idea: BILLBOARD COP-- A STORY OF DECEPTION, OBSESSION, A SERIAL
KILLER AND LOVE.
York Wylinski, a Boston police detective,
short on time and patience, wants an old-fashioned wife and puts up a billboard
ad. Jen Lyman, a thoroughly modern
reporter wants his story and applies, pretending to be an old fashioned girl.
Chasing her big story, she contacts the detective assigned to the murdered
reporter’s case. The Billboard Cop is the detective in charge! Their anger and simmering attraction bursts
into flames when they collide. The
tension escalates when she becomes the killer’s obsession. And the detective’s obsession as well.
Premise: Accepting the unlikely alliance
between a reporter married to her job and a cop who hates reporters, proves
love can alter even steadfast goals.
Who would think a simple business card under
a clunker windshield by a rich guy would inspire a story? And how did the change of location switch my
mind set? I have no idea, all I know is the idea set me on fire and I had
the structure of the story laid out in four days and still had time for
research and a good time. Of course
sleep had to wait until I returned to Honolulu.
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