Working at Home

My cell phone vibrates repeatedly with calls and text messages.

The Terminex man leans on the doorbell.

The dogs go crazy telling me an intruder has breached their security.

The handyman who should've been here two weeks ago finally appears to fix the the doors that stopped locking...a terribly necessary task, I know.

The dogs freak out...again- They want me know to know the handyman's here.

The big dog offers to eat the handyman and as he's on a diet, I know he's serious. For a long moment, I consider saying yes.

The back door slams 108 times.

The repairman starts working...on the other side of the too-thin brick wall, directly across from my chair, inches from my left ear.

People stomp down the hallway swearing about how impossible it is to "get anything done around here!"

The dryer beeps and will continue to beep until "someone" turns it off.

The front door creaks back and forth and back and forth while the handyman's assistant studies the problem and devises possible solutions...out loud.

My stomach growls.  My new main character won't talk to me.

I break long enough to raid the refrigerator for a few bites of five-day-old tortellini, then return to my post- just as the handyman, joined by his talkative

assistant, begins drilling into the wall beside my head.

The phone rings two more times. 

Bailey, the big dog, sleeps through all of this, snoring on the floor at my feet, his legs twitching as he chases rabbits in his dream.

People often ask "How do you come up with your plot ideas?" and "Is it hard, coming up with inventive ways to kill people off in your books?"

I just smile and say, "To tell you the truth, it's really pretty easy."