Only five weeks after I’d hoped to finish it, I now have this:
Beginnings
A Kate Martinelli story by
Laurie R. King
Please note: story, not novel. See the thickness of that stack of pages? This is a 115 page novella, not a full-sized book. I don’t have a pub date for it yet. But this is how it opens–yes, in Kate’s first person voice:
All stories begin. A newborn’s wail, a doctor’s news, the scream of brakes on the road outside—with most stories, there’s a place where you can look back and say, that’swhere it started: where I met the guy, where I decided the life, where I took one turn and not the other.
And I heard once (probably from Lee, she tells me most of those things that stick in my brain) that a good story loops together its end with its opening.
I’ve been a homicide cop most of my life. I know all about stories that are both an end and a beginning, because someone else’s end is where I generally come in. For the victim’s family, that chapter of their lives opens with a 3 am ring on their phone or doorbell. But this one I’m telling you about is my life, not my job—which means that I was on the receiving end of one of those moments, too.