Everyone’s Dirty Little Secrets

Adultery! Stalking! Serial Killing! Chaos Theory!

The original inspiration for this story came while I was taking a fiction writing class in graduate school - a convoluted plot involving a man who commits a crime while someone else is using his passport, which provides him an alibi. Until he finds himself the suspect of a crime committed by the other man while using his passport. It was called "Passport" at first, and later "Crook," before the title "Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets" finally came to me in the shower one morning.

Talking about the story idea with a fellow writer in the class, she dismissed it as not literature - genre storytelling full of clichés - double crosses and triple crosses.

That didn't bother me, because I wasn't concerned with literature - I was fascinated with the craft of writing - constructing plots, writing compelling dialogue, and trying to make pages turn.

I stopped and started the story a few times over a number of years- even scripted some of it as a graphic novel at one point. It sat idly waiting for my attention while I abandoned it to write Twitch of the Death Camp, revise Seeing Crows and start other stories that will hopefully see the light of day at some point.

And I'm glad it sat - because during that time, I developed a deep appreciation for old school pulp fiction, and writers ilke Gil Brewer, in particular, whose novels like The Vengeful Virgin and The Red Scarf inspired me to pick this story back up and fully embrace it as the lurid piece of pulp it was meant to be. Literature be damned.