Good people make good books

Doris and her dogs would make for good books to read

Who doesn’t like to make fun of their neighbors? Come on, admit it—if you were a journalist you’d be dishing on Doris and her dogs, tattling on Terri and her too-tight tops, and lambasting Lynn’s lascivious lifestyle. You’d be your very own TMZ.

After all, you love gossip; I know you do. Stop pretending you don’t.

Now imagine you’re going to write a novel. (No denying that either—everybody wants to.) This is your chance to throw everyone you know into the mix and march them around like the puppetmaster you long to be. They will do your bidding. They’ll get into jams that you’ve designed just for them. And, best of all, they’ll say everything you ever wished you could make them say in real life.

This image from Monty Python’s Flying Circus is property of the BBC, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Say no more.

Of course, in a novel, any similarity to persons living or deceased is purely coincidental, right? (Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. Know what I mean?)

But hey, like the teacher always told the girl whose pigtails got pulled, you only tease these people because you like them, right? That’s my story anyway, and I’m stickin’ to it. And so far, they seem to believe me.

Go ahead: make her do it

Just ask Laura, one of the characters in “Senseless Confidential,” who happens to be reading the book at this very moment up at her restaurant on the mountain—with her blue Ford pickup right outside.

(And by the way, she loves it. She told me so just yesterday.)