Becky Bosshart

My first three pages introduce the protagonist, a side character, a minion of the antagonist, and grounds in setting and place. You get the main plot and sympathy for the MC and SC, plus an intro to the emotional side plot. 1. Amalia and Clara drove to Sunday church service together that morning as they had for a year now. Amalia in a black linen dress with a lovely interlocking pattern of embroidered white flowers at the cuffs and bodice. Clara wore a gray sweater dress and a black crepe shrug. They both had on dark sunglasses, and not because they wanted to hide from anyone. The Nevada sun punished even the godly. They didn’t speak, parking and then walking to the front doors as the hilltop filled with cars for the 9 a.m. service. Fellow church members, God’s disciples in modern times. The community of Piles, Nevada lost Signor Tau Lasso a year ago on May 13. The tragedy had brought Tau’s daughter, Amalia, more into Clara’s life, and not just for the usual reason of mourning a father and mentor beloved by so many. The Word in Life Worship Center sat on a hill against a bright blue spring sky. Most buildings in Piles, Nevada were on a mound of dirt because the town was built over excavation sites and the residual of mine leavings. God’s house crested the largest pile, capped with a clay-colored composite roof gracefully sloping over the main sanctuary. A wooden cross perched jauntily to the side. That morning, a bit of cheap pink fabric had caught in the wind and wound itself about the crossbar, the loose material flapping gently in the wind. Clara paused, looking up askance. That should’ve been their first clue that something strange was in the wind. They walked on to the steady pounding of their grief. Clara recalled Tau’s funerial procession, but them so far behind that even though the coffin was buried a year ago they still hadn’t caught up with the reality. Grief had no prescribed span; it stayed with you until something else took its place, maybe not even then. Their grief was still fresh as the year before. This had been Clara’s first real experience with death. It was even worse in their case because Tau’s story had no true conclusion, not for Amalia. Not for Clara. They couldn’t finish his story in their minds, so how could anyone else? Little did they know, that was exactly what everyone else had done. The front doors opened, exhaling a floral scent so strong, Clara thought the cherry blossom air fresheners in the church bathrooms must’ve exploded. That should’ve been their second clue that the tone for this day was not what they were expecting. The church greeter was sweat-sheened toadie Kenny Susich. At first Clara wondered how even he could smell of roses. But no. Pink roses and peonies clustered on draped tables in the foyer. Amalia sneezed into her black hanky. Kenny’s broad face shifted into a concerned expression as he evaluated their somber attire. "You needn’t go into mourning yet, Clara. Your time will come. You may soon have one." His large globs of flesh constituting two breasts and a stomach pressed against the yellow fabric of his church branded T-shirt. He foisted a pink rose on her with a wink and a lecherous grin. "Have one?" At first Clara thought he meant the rose, which she tried to pass on to Amalia. She wisely refused any gift from Kenny Susich. Clara had acted automatically, not thinking about it first as she should have done. "Have one of what?" His arm pits sweat stained, wispy blond hair featherlight into a horn just over his forehead. Kenny’s light eyes were smaller still when he smiled, his grin displaying every tooth. Clara could count them if she wanted; she didn’t want. He laughed. She didn’t. Kenny struck a pensive pose: chin on his right knuckles, arm propped up as if taking a school photo though he was standing in the doorway, blocking everyone. "Don’t you know what today is?" It was the one-year anniversary of Tau Lasso’s death, Clara knew that for sure. She looked at her friend. Amalia didn’t seem to be in the mood to unpuzzle a conversation with Kenny Susich. She propelled them both forward. "What did I just miss?" Clara asked her friend. Amalia: "Mother’s Day, Clara. Of the two of us, apparently Kenny thinks only you can birth a child." She gave her friend a wary eye. “Better watch out for that one. He’s chosen you.” Children: the church’s entry hall was filled with them, galloping free in the only other place they could get away with it besides their own homes. Mothers and daughters. Mothers and sons. Mothers and their mothers. Mothers and graduates. Not only was it Mother’s Day weekend, but it was also the graduation celebration for all the high school seniors in the church. Children were hanging from the balustrades and the teens weren’t behaving any better. "But Did Kenny Susich just insinuate that you’re old enough to be in menopause?" Clara ground her teeth. In addition to having a jaw like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, she also felt any perceived insult or injustice against one her friends. She wound a long gangly arm through Amalia’s. Also like a T-Rex, Clara had small hands and feet that would’ve been lovely if not so incongruous with the rest of her body. Amalia waved it off, not even bothering to be insulted or argue the point. She was only 45 and Clara had just turned 30. "I’m surprised a goober like Kenny Susich even knows what menopause is." Clara dropped the pink rose he’d given her, hoping it would be trod over. But then she regretted it: that rose, all these roses, had cost the church money. Today wasn’t a day she wanted to celebrate, the anniversary of the death of Tau, father figure to Clara, beloved father to Amalia, but that didn’t mean she should spurn an investment of church funds. Soon she would find the invoice and see just how much that investment had been. It probably wasn’t possible that others’ joy sucked life from you, but Clara felt it then, the certainty everyone else was living and she and Amalia were stuck in the past, their days diminishing before their eyes.

1. A good Christian woman raised in a Nevada brothel must uncover the truth about the death of her father figure from the ruling family of her western desert town, bringing to light a murder and a vast network of white-collar crime. 2. King of Dirt Glenn “GB” Burney is the family patriarch, church founder, and building magnate of Piles, Nevada. The Burney family has a legacy that goes beyond evangelical values and modular homes. A technophile, GB made his first million selling cement pavers online during the dot-com boom. He paid a fair price for the cutting-edge e-commerce tool to compute square footage. Or so he says. He’s a power walking, clean living octogenarian. GB laps the teens on the high school track, Sony Walkman cranking his favorite sermons, talking back to the preacher as if they’re in the same room together. His BlackBerry has both Ted Haggard and Nevada Lieutenant Governor Lonnie Hammargren on speed dial. Business has been booming, but not all is well in Piles, Nevada. The Burney family accountant is dead and GB might be responsible. Or perhaps it was his daughter-in-law Rachel, who he secretly hates. He’s deflecting blame on to her, so our hero should be suspicious. He also could be covering up for one of his sons. Or maybe GB is losing the plot — he was recently diagnosed with dementia. Dust obscures and flood waters run deep in Piles, Nevada. 3. Bad Soil Kingdom of Dust The Sower and the Seed 4. My genre: mystery thriller Literature: Rachel Hawkins’s gothic thrillers — compares to my novel because of the twisty family drama with quirkiness, humor, and darkness; spooky old mansions, cool settings that easily become creepy Jane Harper’s Aaron Falk mystery series — community mysteries with page-turning plot and writing, white-collar, domestic crimes; strong sense of place, rural, desert small town community, with a natural disaster looming From outside literature: … the anthology series Covenant but set in the dry American West. … a contemporary version of Red Dead Redemption as a twisty feminist revenge tale. 5. A good Christian woman raised in a Nevada brothel works to uncover the truth about the death of her father figure, pitting herself against the ruling family of her desert town, which is about to drown beneath a hundred-year flood. This contemporary version of Red Dead Redemption is a twisty feminist revenge tale mimicking the biblical Parable of the Sower. 6. Clara is the daughter of a Nevada brothel madam, a major figure in the legal sex industry, but that doesn’t mean she knows how to “catch a man.” Born again into the Disciples of the West evangelical movement, Clara wants a godly man, but finds only frustration. And one toad who just won’t leave her alone. Quirky Clara is always the friend, never the girlfriend. And sometimes, because of her notorious mother, the one to avoid and pity. One scenario is that her pastor and wife will try and set her up with this “godly toad.” This is a trigger for her because she interprets this as her friends thinking she’s only good enough for an unattractive, small man with little imagination. Her reaction is to be shocked and resent her place as the single, disappointed woman in a church full of married, content couples. She acts out the frustration of being the third and fifth wheel, taking care of others people’s children and volunteering in service and prayer ministries — watching everyone else live the godly life she’s supposed to have as well. 7. The town of Piles could be defined by one geographic certainty: it is the closest to Carson City, the capital of Nevada, while still having the cheapest real estate. It also has the most famous legal brothel, 20 minutes away from the silver dome of the state Capitol, as the crow flies. State protective services can get you there in 10. The residents of Piles, Nevada, population 2,500 last Census, believe whether the sands continue to shift from past ecological malfeasance or the new swarm quakes shake them into a different jurisdiction, Piles will always be cheap. Tawdry as well. The town was once called Piles Station because this was the rail toll stop and turntable between Carson City and Virginia City, two much more illustrious cities. Piles was the ignominious narrow gauge station where the robber barons either paid taxes or bribes. The taxes decreased with the silver. The bribes not necessarily so. Today the town has the proximity to city amenities and conveniences without its prices. But none of its charm nor natural beauty either. People generally don’t want to live in a former mining wasteland. Unless they don’t have a choice. When Clara was young, they were practically giving Storyed County land away to anyone who could wet it down, stopping the dust from blowing onto neighbors and covering them like the lava of Vesuvius. On blustery days, the elevated residents of Virginia City could look down the mountain at a great brown cloud of aridisol hovering like smog. Piles. Piles of dirt in Piles, Nevada, swirling swirling, so the children sang sing-song, like a flushed toilet. My 84,000-word mystery thriller novel features these other scene settings: — the Word in Life Worship Center, which has a state-of-the-art sound system built for the pastor’s charismatic worship pastor son complete with Jumbotron — the Red Rose Ranch, a legal brothel owned by Rose Schafer, Clara’s mother — the American Flat Mill, a 30-acre industrial ruin that has been turned into an illegal graffiti art museum and rave site — the American Minerals Co. Mine, the last cyanide leach pit mine on the Comstock