And So It (Finally) Begins

Mixie's story is one that I came up with while still in high school and working at the local grocery store. One afternoon, I was cleaning out the deep freezer at the back of the store and I imagined what would happen if I were locked in and no one noticed. Thus, Mixie was born.

Or at least the idea of Mixie. I didn't have a name for her, but I knew I wanted it to be some sort of unusual, perhaps made-up nickname, but not made up in the way that "Nichelle" is made up. I found the name "Mixie" on a box of produce that had come into the store. "Mixie", it appeared, was their brand name, and it stuck with me.

I knew that Mixie had two sisters: an overbearing oldest sister and a twin sister. I knew that Mixie felt isolated from her family and this was due to the distance between her and her twin, whom I quickly named Whitney. Mickey developed next and was the quickest and easiest character to take shape, based partly on my father and mostly of a caricature of him and ever other stereotypical Irish father.

I never got around to writing Mixie, but the idea for her story stuck with me. Well, actually, I abandoned what her story was supposed to be with the ensuing years, but she stuck with me. In late 2007, I came up with a new story for Mixie, one that, after figuring out who the victim was, came together rather easily, amazingly enough.

I'd had the first line of Mixie's story pulsating through my brain for years:

I breezed through the door of Willow Falls's smallest grocery store. My neon yellow sunglasses were resting on the bridge of my nose, perfectly matching my neon jersey and the rubber strap on my flip-flops. My red hair was being its usual self, looking like red flames pouring out of a burning building. I had tried to clip it down, but halfway here it had somehow escaped its confines, much like my dog L.A. flees from her kennel when it's time to time to go to the vet. I had a big leather bag slung over my sunburned shoulder, and I felt pretty important.


When I finally decided on Mixie's new story, it kept appearing in my head as though it was winter. It was very hard for me to let go of the summer setting, but other than the humidity, the summer season played no role in the story, whereas winter could add a lot of tension to the story. The opening line now reads as follows:

I was carefully rounding the corner to the Keeyes' Family Market, staying clear of icy patches, when my cell phone went off. I didn't bother to check the caller ID; I knew who it was. I flipped the phone open, still concentrating on the icy road. "Mixie!" Mickey's voice roared. "Get in here!"



I worked out the story in my head one night during a two hour car drive and finished that night in bed. The story began to make sense. A few nights later, two weeks before Christmas, I typed up a rough outline in Word. I divided my page into two columns, writing different events in the right column as they occurred to me, and putting them in their proper order in the left column.

I remember reading that J.K. Rowling made lists of hundreds and hundreds of characters for her Harry Potter series. It helped her to make her world real and saved time when she needed another character to enter a scene. Here they were with their backstory all intact. The following night, I made a list of all the characters that would or might appear. I divided them into text boxes with the following headings: families, friends, colleagues, suspects, others, and police officers. Coming up with character names is one of the things I struggle with (last names are a bitch!), so doing it all in one sitting really helped.

I've got the opening scene done (who knows how much it will change?), but after three different drafts, I'm fairly happy with it. Now I'm moving into the Information Stage which I'm going to do my best not to turn into InfoDump.