Bookshelf Battle

Hey 3.5 readers.

I have an announcement. Today, I finished the first draft of Shop Buddy, a mystery/comedy that took me, eh I’d say about a year to write, though I took long breaks here and there.

The plot? Steve is a recent philosophy major and graduate of a notoriously bad college. Unemployed and unemployable, he takes a job with Shop Buddy, a website/app where people shop for goods and deliver them straight to the customer’s door. When he screws up an order big time (the customer wanted a birthday cake but the app told him to bring her a box set of Oingo Boingo’s greatest hits) he is demoted, and forced to work with his ex-girlfriend Kendra, another recent college grad who is finding it difficult to find a real job, which isn’t fair, because she did all the right things you’re supposed to do.

Amidst this backdrop, Steve gets a bizarre order from a strange old man. Knives. Chainsaws. Rubber gloves. Ropes. Chains. What is the old timer up to? Could he be The Fairmont Falls Lady Snatcher, a vile abducter of women that the media won’t stop talking about? Kendra says yes. Steve says no. Will these two unravel the mystery? Will they rekindle their lost love and most important…will they ever find real jobs?

It’s very satisfying to finish a first draft. And while it has my naughty brand of humor, I kept all eff bombs out of it so I’d say, it’s rated PG 13 at best. I think this will be my first full length self published novel (I have published short stories but never a novel) so stay tuned.

Still a lot of work ahead but nice to have the first draft in the bag.

Sidenote – I was inspired to write this at the height of the pandemic, when I relied on grocery delivery and I would be shocked at how I could put down something like apple and get back all manner of ridiculous things where you’d have to stand on your head side ways and wonder how they thought that had anything to do with apples.