All Nick wants to do is take his dying father for a perfect father-son weekend in the Scottish Highlands. It’s not much to ask, is it? A log cabin, a roaring fire, a bottle of fine whisky and two days to paper over the cracks in their relationship.
However, Nick didn’t plan on making the trip with a dead neighbour in the back of his car. Or the neighbour’s dog. He really didn’t plan on being pursued by a psychotic female assassin intent on collecting body parts. And he really, really didn’t plan on encountering a platoon of heavily armed mercenaries, or some very hungry boars, or a werewolf.
A Heart in the Right Place - a horror comedy about setting out with the very best intentions and then messing everything up.
A Heart in the Right PlaceIt was February 2018 and it was a fairly standard day in the life of a writer. It was a Wednesday. We had the launch event for our latest book, a cozy mystery with witches, coming up on Saturday. I was at home and expecting the delivery of a box of books for us to sell or give out at the launch. We were also working on a number of new books, including a plan for a horror novel in which a father and son go on a road trip together and “something bad” happens. The “something bad” was as yet unclear but we were working on it.
The letterbox rattled and I went to the door. There was a red and white card from the postie: “Sorry, you were out when we called…” I hadn’t heard them try to deliver a parcel, which was undoubtedly the books for the launch. Okay, our doorbell was broken but I should have been able to hear a knock. Anyway, the parcel had been left with a neighbour across the road. I didn’t know them personally, wasn’t even sure I knew what they looked like.
I went across the road and knocked. No reply. I knocked again (after that curious wait in which you wonder if knocking now was too soon and sounded aggressively impatient or if waiting to knock now made it seem like you were loitering silently on the doorstep for too long, like some kind of weirdo). No response. I even looked in the window which would have been mortifyingly embarrassing if I happened to see someone looking out.
I went away, pottered about with the usual writerly things (many of which involve avoiding doing actual writing) and went back a few hours later. I knocked on the door. No reply. I went back in the early evening, during that narrow window of time when everyone is likely to be at home but it’s not yet a rudely late hour to go knocking on doors. Still nothing.
On Thursday, I went round twice; once in the morning, once in the evening. Still no response. There was no car on the drive. Had they taken receipt of my parcel and then gone on holiday?
I got in touch with my co-writer, Heide. We were in danger of having a launch event with no books, a serious authorly faux pas if ever there was one. We discussed what we could do. It was too late to order more books. I could complain to the Royal Mail but what could they do? Should I go poke around the back of the house, have a look in one of the rear windows and see if my parcel was visible somewhere. But what then?
In the novel we were planning, Nick takes his terminally ill father, Tony, on a weekend away but “something” happens which causes events to spiralling uncontrollably and violently towards horror and comedy (horror and comedy are opposite sides of the same coin – think, have you ever laughed at something horrible? Has a comedy ever made you squirm in discomfort?) Heide and I began to discuss, what if the “something” was a parcel that couldn’t be collected?
On Friday, I called round three times. Sometimes the car was there. Sometimes it wasn’t. No one answered the door. I left a note with my phone number on.
Very quickly, in our e-mail back and forth, Heide and I decided the parcel in our story should be a bottle of very expensive whisky that holds important sentimental value for our father-son duo. What would Nick do to get that parcel in time for their trip away? Would he break in? And what would he find once he’d broken in? What if the reason no one was answering the door was something gruesome and terrible? Would Nick notify the authorities or would he try to cover it up to avoid ruining his final trip away with his dying dad? And how would subsequent events unfold?
In the end, I didn’t need to break into my neighbour’s house. On Saturday, a woman answered the door, her tiny baby in her arms. She had the parcel. Her husband worked shifts. The baby was unwell and they had been to the doctors several times over the past few days and fast asleep in a room at the back of the house at other times. It all made sense.
With hours to spare, we had our books and we prepared for our launch event.
Over nibbles and cocktails that evening (the cocktails all had potion-like names because it was a witchy novel), someone asked us that inevitable question, “Where do you get your ideas from?”
Usually, we make up some vague lies about waiting for inspiration or we tell the truth and say we steal them from films we’ve watched or other, better books we’ve read. But, for once, we had a decent answer.
“Well,” I said, “I was expecting a parcel…”
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Author Bio:
Heide Goody is the stupid one in the writing partnership and Iain Grant is the sensible one. Together, they are the authors of over a dozen books.
The ‘Clovenhoof’ series (in which Satan loses his job and has to move to Birmingham) has recently been optioned by a Hollywood production company.
Heide and Iain are both married, but not to each other.
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(Kensington) is set for release in June 2017. Non-fiction in the form of informational brochures and workshop materials treating the winery industry were his forte along with an extensive background and experience in construction that started with his service in the U.S. Navy and included vocational school classroom teaching.
