Susan P. Baker on using her law experience for the suspense novel UNAWARE

Any one of us can end up the victim of a crime. Today's guest, Susan P. Baker, took inspiration from her experiences as a lawyer for her novel Unaware. If this essay is any indication, get ready for some major suspense!

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Unaware in Real Life

by Susan P. Baker

UNAWARE is loosely based a case I handled when I first started practicing law. At the time, I was married to my first husband. We were the parents of two young daughters. My husband traveled a lot on the job, which was necessary but could be annoying when I was trying to get a law practice off the ground and parent the children at the same time. We did not have an au pair, couldn’t afford one. My father had been an attorney but was on the bench when I won my law license.

One night, when my husband was out of town, I went to a meeting and was out too late. The girls were old enough to stay by themselves. I stopped off at the grocery store on the way home and noticed when I was almost to my house that a car had been following me. When I pulled into my driveway, the car stopped and parked in front of the house opposite mine. I immediately backed out and drove away, hoping to lead the person away from my children. We didn’t have cell phones back then. I drove a short distance to my sister’s house, jumped out, and ran inside. 

My brother- in-law drove to my house to check things out while my sister and I called the police. When they found no one there, I went home, having become aware of how easy it would be for someone to hide around my house, what with the hedge next to the front door. I pulled into the garage, put the door down, ran inside to check on the girls who were okay, and got the butcher knife out of the drawer and put it under my pillow. We didn’t have any guns. I had a hard time sleeping that night. The following day I bought a .38 revolver.

At that time, I was building my family law practice as well as practicing criminal defense law. I shared an office with two of my father’s former law partners. They were much older and often gave me advice. One of them had the messiest office I’d ever seen, but he had a brilliant mind and could cite law that I’d never even heard of.

In one of my cases, a beautiful, young woman with long, blond hair came to see me about her situation. She hadn’t been married to her husband very long but was ready to get out because he’d become violent almost as soon as they’d said “I do.” He worked on the wharves and had a very sharp cotton knife that he threatened her with when she spoke of leaving him. He was a few years older than she was and fairly good looking. His father was a big-wig in the longshoreman’s union and had bailed him out of trouble many times. 

Susan P. Baker

I took the case against the advice of the other lawyers because she didn’t have much money and had been turned down by other lawyers who were afraid. It wasn’t long before she told me that her husband threatened to kill her and me. We tried our best to settle the case amicably. The man’s father even came to see me in my office. He knew my father. He said he’d make his son settle the case, pay the money he needed to pay, and he even gave me a pendant of a gold leaf. Anyway, clearly the inspiration for UNAWARE came from my law practice.

UNAWARE

What you don’t know CAN hurt you.

Frustrated with the two controlling men in her life, Dena Barlow Armstrong has outlined a rosy future for herself and her children, independent of them. Her husband, Zack, constantly pushes her to turn over her inheritance to him and, when she doesn’t, he punishes her with his indifference. Her law partner and cousin, Lucas, controls her money and the types of cases she accepts.

Just as Dena begins to achieve her goal of independence, someone emerges with very different plans for her. Unaware of the danger she faces, Dena lives each day as a wife, mother, and attorney. Then one day, when her husband is out of town, the stranger lurks in her garage, waiting until she and the children go to bed…

This standalone novel is Susan P. Baker’s sixth mystery/suspense novel.

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Learn more about Susan P. Baker on her website.

Purchase Unaware on Amazon.

When Fiction Is Reality: Kevin Hopson on Loss, #Writing, and DELIVERING JACOB

Please welcome my fellow MuseItUp author, Kevin Hopson, who wrote his new novelette, Delivering Jacob, on a painfully personal topic. I invited Kevin to talk about the transfer of real life into fiction.

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When Fiction is Reality

By Kevin Hopson

 

If you’re a fiction writer, you know that writing often portrays some aspects of our real life. Whether these depictions are in the form of names, character traits, settings, themes or whatever, they all come from a universal comfort in finding something we can relate to. As a result, we can’t help but include reality in fiction. However, what happens when an event, especially a devastating one, has impacted your life so much that it inspires you to write a story about it?

My cross-genre novelette, Delivering Jacob, is a perfect example of this. It deals with the loss of a child, which is something I experienced back in August 2010 when my son, Aydin, was stillborn at 36 weeks. Numb and in shock, I couldn’t imagine ever writing again, yet it crept back into my life only a few months later as I attempted to grieve and cope with the loss. My writing wasn’t the same, though. It turned more laborious, and the quality I had come to expect with my work was lacking. While writing provided a means of release for me, I had to come to terms with the loss before taking it seriously again.

It took nearly eighteen months for this to occur. After the birth of my second son, Skyler, I was motivated to pick up where I left off. That was three-and-a-half years ago, and I have published nearly a dozen stories/books since then. Even though I integrated some aspect of my loss into several of those works, none of them dealt directly with the death of a child, which is why I felt the need to write Delivering Jacob.

The idea hit me out of the blue, and everything fell into place almost immediately. In fact, the topic felt so natural to me that I managed to write the story in a few days. In addition to the theme, there are many ways I paid tribute to my experience. For example, the main character’s son, Ken, was named after my father who passed away in December 2011. I include other names of family members and even set the story in the Pacific Northwest, which is my favorite part of the country.

I’ve been told that Delivering Jacob is my best work to date. I’m not sure if I agree, but it’s definitely the most personal piece I’ve written, so maybe it hits the reader in a way that my other stories don’t. Regardless, it’s a diverse story that has a little bit of something for everyone … mystery, romance, crime, thrills, and even a hint of the supernatural. The subject matter is important to me, as well as the characters, which is why I have already written follow-up stories revolving around the life of Jacob.

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Here is the book trailer for Delivering Jacob:

Learn more about Kevin Hopson on his blog. 

Purchase Delivering Jacob as well as Kevin Hopson's other books on Amazon.