Tag Archives: Family noir

Picture Massacre

Friday Fictioneers – Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

Picture Massacre

The whole family together; that’s what I’ll do. Put all these pictures into a leather-bound album. I need to sort them; uncles, aunts and the great-great somebodies or another? My brother’s family pictures have survived as has one of Uncle Bert in uniform.  I am not sure how old my mother was then, but the boy on the tractor, well that’s me with Baxter my collie. Oh, here’s Auntie Rose with a Derringer tucked into her fishnets. Was that real?
‘Why us?’
‘Family memories?’ said the nurse.
‘Yea, that’s all I have left.’
‘Okay, we need to change those bandages.’

MISSING – a novel

 

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Missing – a novel.

This is my first attempt at writing a full length–well 75000 words–novel.

The idea for the book came after attending family gatherings, mostly funerals, where my relatives where strangers. These people I knew existed but never met regularly, mostly never.
When I first started school at five years old, all of my relatives lived within a twenty-mile radius. On my father’s side they were farmers, on my mother’s side they worked in engineering.
I left school at sixteen and travelled, so I was the one who disappeared, and I suspect I am the stranger in the midst.
I recently met two of my relatives the same age as me, I remember starting school with them. I always thought they were my cousins, but discovered they were my father’s cousins. You can imagine there was a long discussion about who was who and an attempt at constructing a loose family tree.

Out of the discussion came the origins for my idea for the novel Missing. I pondered the thoughts of family bonds, trust, and misconceptions.

Missing–The story is of a young woman on the quest to find her parents and discover why as a child someone had placed her into care. No one would explain why.
She finds the house in the village where she was born and from there she traces and discovers her relatives. Her investigate disturbs them as she comes closer to the truth about the whereabouts of her parents.

I have passed the novel back to the proof-reader.
Well, I need a break from it.

Alibrasphere will publish the book at the end of April or early May.