Last night I just finished my first draft of Luke Warm. It’s about teenaged girls being abducted and the protagonist, in this case Luke Warm, an investigative TV reporter who exposes them from local, regional, and finally internationally.
Luke has a partner by the name of Nick Roberts a private detective who just lost his partner, Danielle Youngblood, a member of the Crow Tribe. The entire gambit begins with Danielle’s murder because she is searching for a missing girl feared abducted at a mall in Missoula Montana. In the middle of this is a romantic interest and a social justice angle that reflects a growing problem worldwide; sexual trafficking of adolescent girls off Native reservations being abducted, auctioned, and sold. As a backstory, Danielle’s sister and niece are abducted by a Crow elder twenty years earlier by the name of Adrian Stillwater. Adrian and Nick share a common bond; Adrian’s twin brother kills Nick’s father during a church service 30 years before.
My next project, which actually isn’t new but a complete rewrite of a draft I did last year. But my computer I was using then did not back up my story to the new computer I have now. It seemingly goes with the territory. It gave me time to think on this plot which basically involves Mark Marteau’s final case. I’m calling it Barracuda. Mark has issues with remembering things but he does remember long ago and in that far away time he tries revisiting a cold murder case just after became a bounty hunter and he bought the Plymouth Barracuda with the reward money from Old Joe’s killer. I’m still uncertain how this story will flow, since I am a pantser and not a plotter. We shall see.
So there you have it; the beginning of a new series and the end of another, which if my publisher likes it and signs off on it, should be ready in a few years down the road.
Jerry Schellhammer 