While I was on vacation, I spent a lot of time on the road and at a motel.  I also went to a Bruce Springsteen concert (not my first) with my daughter.

 

In the course of all of those experiences, an idea for a novel came together.  This one really isn't a River City novel, per se, though it will have that setting.  Most of it takes place outside of River City, in Central Washington and Seattle.

 

The title refers to what a motel is---a village full of strangers.  The main character will spend some time in a motel, observing the people there and in the tourist town he's visiting.  The story itself will be chopped up and told somewhat out of time order (here's a nod to Pulp Fiction), but the thrust of it involves a man who has a traumatic event, his life slowly crumbles and he eventually decides to commit suicide.  How he reaches the point where he either has to do that or find a reason not to is the rest of the story.

 

Being a Springsteen music fanatic, I intend to use some of his songs as catalysts within this story, if I can do so without being hokey.  The nice thing about this concert was that it was solo acoustic and that many of the songs were hopeful and life-affirming.

 

Before that sounds too cotton candy and rainbows, let me tell you that this thing is dark.  What happens to him is dark.  How he and others respond to it is dark.  His decision to check out is dark and what he does while waiting around to do it is dark and ironic.  Ultimately, the ending is dark, too, though I won't give it away.

 

I've written just a few lines of this novel (maybe a page or two) and taken a bunch of notes.  I've been writing more steadily on my hockey novel, but I think that this novel might be next.  Of course, that doesn't include the edit of HOF I'll do after I get it back from Conway...

 

Lots to do.  Wish I could write full time.