First Line – Good Shepherd
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There’s always some cop who thinks he can beat the system. It’s my job to stop them.
This is the first line in my long short story, “Good Shepherd.”
Okay, I cheated. It is the first two lines. But they kind of need each other, don’t they?
The narrator of this story is Lieutenant Alan Hart, and this is a River City story. But it is unlike other RC stories. For starters, it is the only time Hart narrates. He gets face time in the novels, but those are in third person. This is the only time a reader gets to be inside his self-righteous, sanctimonious head.
It’s also different in that there is heavier sexual content than in most of my work. In fact, the point of the story is that Hart, mister pure and perfect pointer-outer of everyone else’s transgressions, finds himself in a jam for a change.
I was always told as a young officer that three things could derail a police career. I won’t put it the same way I heard it, but the three pitfalls were finanaces, alcohol, and illicit relationships. In this story, Hart experiences the latter most.
And, boy does he….
First lines, though. What do you think? I actually think this is a good opener. I’m going to give it an A-. But what the hell do I know?
You?
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The cover you see in this post is from a three-story collection of River City stories that are kinda sexy – “Good Shepherd,” “Cassie,” and “Gently Used.” The sexual content in these stories is atypical of most of my crime fiction in that it is certainly at the hard ‘R’ level compared with more of a PG-13 to mild R approach in most of my work. But there was a purpose to this, as the sexual element of each story is integral to the story itself.
I’ll let you read the stories yourself to see why, but the answer should be self-evident.
“Good Shepherd” first appeared at Ascent Aspirations Magazine in the November 2005 issue. This story also went on to be a finalist for the DerringerAward that year in the Long Story category. It was the first of three of my stories lucky enough to be a finalist but always remaining the bridesmaid, including “The Worst Door” in 2006 and “Dead Even” in 2008.
Interestingly enough, there were a couple of comments in the Yahoo discussion group for SMFS decrying the sexual content of “Good Shepherd.” I don’t remember the exact verbiage but a few people were taken aback. I don’t know if it were simply the sexuality itself or the idea that a story with strong sexual content should have been a finalist in the first place.
Either way, it didn’t matter because, alas, it didn’t win. It lost out to a great story, though, and it is true what they say about being nominated, particularly given the way the Derringer process works.
It was an interesting experience, and served to always remind me of two things:
1) Everyone’s tolerances of different kinds of content are different, and;
2) We Americans are weird about sex.
Source: All The Madness In My Soul
