A future story location . . .

When I moved into my new neighborhood and my neighbors learned that I was a mystery writer they began suggesting story ideas to me. I, however, had one neighborhood idea in mind – the blue house. The funny thing is that it escaped the imaginations of my neighbors. Here’s a picture of the house with my dog photobombing the photo.

Dog in front of house

The house was inhabited up to perhaps two years ago by a man whose name was “Bones.” He was old and passed away at least a year before I moved into the hood. Neighbors said he was estranged from his family and in recent years neighbors looked after him and brought him food. The house has been condemned as the foundation is damaged from age. The family hasn’t torn it down or tried to sell the land. The house looks creepy and I imagined a dead body in the old van or boat (or both). Last winter was mild, this current winter has been much colder. Apparently the family forgot to turn off the water and so the pipes burst and the house expelled 30,000 gallons of water before the city showed up to turn off the water. Now I had a new location for a dead body – it could be frozen in basement ice. This will be Jill Quint book 16 when I get around to writing it. As you can imagine, every time I walk the dog by this house, I imagine murder and mayhem, lol.

On another note, you may or may not have heard of Facebook’s AI project. They apparently downloaded all the books from LitHub (a pirated book site) to train their AI. I found 23 of my 25 books on their website. Facebook claims it is fair use and they don’t have to pay authors. However, they are being sued by numerous groups. Personally, I feel it is outright theft of my intellectual property (my books) which are all copyrighted. Given that Facebook’s profit was $137B in 2023, They clearly have the cash to pay for their use of my books. There are lots of groups suing them; we’ll see if we ever get reimbursed. I doubt it.

Some day spring will arrive in WI. Overnight, it snowed then rained. It’s warmed up to 45F, but the wind chill tells a colder story.

Cheers,

Alec