Marilyn Created

I woke up this morning knowing I’d have to tell you about Marilyn. She haunts me. She always has.

I first began to know that someone was ‘there’, present, looming, but ambiguous, out of focus, during the Great Recession of 2007-2008. I was writing what I thought was my first book for the fifteenth time.

When my son was leaving for college, he said, “Dad, it’s time to finish your book. You’re running out of time.” That was my son. My loving son. But he was right.

I worked on what I thought was my first complete book for a year. What I didn’t realize at the time was that it wasn’t a novel at all. It was a character development for a novel. A pre-novel. I just didn’t know it until it was done and I reread it.

What a shock. What a disappointment in myself. But I knew I had some characters properly developed now. And I could feel something else. Something was infiltrating the book. Not a character, but a presence sometimes looming, sometimes poisoning, my characters throughout my first ‘book’.

As I started my next book, a real book, and not a character development, I knew that the presence must manifest itself in the novel, and I knew that the presence was a woman. I gave her a name, too, but it was wrong. I won’t mention that name here. It’s not important because as I began writing the book, I became more and more obsessed with getting this woman right. I knew what she looked like, I could hear how she speak.

When I write, I outline how I envision the whole book going. The problem with that is characters don’t always do what you expect them to do. As they become increasingly multi-dimensional, they say what you did not plan, and do what you did not expect. This woman was the worst character I’d ever written at this.

I was constantly having to revise my novel outlines because she went off-script. But she got worse. One night she came to me in a dream. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. Freud would have some dream theory explanation that I’m sure I wouldn’t want to hear. It was because of my obsession to get her right, I’m sure. A decade later, I can still remember the dream clearly, which is highly unusual because I do not remember my dreams.

She sat on my chest, her hair black as coal just as I had described her when I was conscious. She was angry, insulted, and spoke to me with disrespect. She yelled at me that I had gotten her name wrong! How could I do that? Her name was Marilyn. That was the end of the dream.

The next morning I awoke excited. I told my wife, “I dreamed of Marilyn. She talked to me last night in my dream.”

Still groggy from just waking up herself, she looked at me puzzled. “Who’s Marilyn?”

“Marilyn is the woman in my book. She’s the woman!” I spoke way too loud for pre-coffee morning for my wife.

“I thought her name was something else? You’ve said it all the time. You won’t stop talking about her,” my wife grumbled.

“No. I was wrong. She told me her name was Marilyn.”

My wife looked at me like I had lost my mind. Holding her arm out and showing me the palm of her hand, she said, “You’re creeping me out. Stop talking.”

Murder For Me is a murder thriller about the crimes of Marilyn and a detective, O.C. Simms, that’s seeking to catch her. It’s an intellectual battle between them, a real world chess game that one wins and one loses.

Murder For Me was very successful, but my readers demanded to know more about Marilyn. Why was she the way she was? How did she acquire her abilities described in the book, and how did they work? I had to answer these questions, and that was part of the challenge in Murder By Storm. Marilyn continues her schemes during a hurricane and she’s chased by a nemesis.

During the promotion of Murder For Me, Marilyn on the cover of the book became quite a success. I began by posting pictures of the cover featuring a model pretending to by Marilyn around the world as I traveled. Notice what I wrote? “…a model pretending to be Marilyn….” That’s because it’s not Marilyn. I know Marilyn. I’ve lived with her in my mind for a decade. The cover’s only a representation of her that she would allow. Readers began posting pictures of Marilyn on the cover while they were on vacation. The pictures got reposted and shared over and over. It was always a picture of the cover of the book with the title “Marilyn relaxing on a Greek beach” or “Marilyn in Hong Kong.” The Greek beach picture got over 13,000 hits. Sandy Lawrence, my promotions representative at the time, couldn’t believe it. One very popular picture was taken by a wife of her husband with the book in his hospital bed. It was titled, “Wife catches Husband with Marilyn in bed.” These posts from readers went on for more than a year.

Her story all comes around in a circle. She’s still that presence haunting the other characters in my books. She’s still the one I have to explain. She steals not only fictionally, but actually. All the attention goes to her story. She looms over every arch, trying to get every advantage for herself.

Murder By Storm is my explanation of why. I hope you like it.

Marilyn is a master of deception, a chameleon living multiple lives to shield her sweet son while ensnaring naive couples in her web of schemes across Houston, Texas. Free from the clutches of the law, she weaves her plans with calculated precision. But shadows from her past loom large—her deranged mother and subservient stepfather, relentlessly badgering her with their fearful questions.

And then there’s O.C. Simms, the disgraced police detective obsessed with bringing her down. Fired for failing to catch her, Simms is haunted by the belief that Marilyn murdered her lover and lawyer, Ed. He’s relentless, determined to hunt her until he’s either vindicated or dead, defying his former captain’s orders.

As a hurricane bears down on Houston, Marilyn sees both a threat and an opportunity. The storm’s fury will devastate the city, creating chaos and diverting attention. Amid the tempest’s destruction, she crafts her most daring plan yet, aiming to exploit the storm to erase all traces of her crimes. But Simms remains undeterred, a relentless force pursuing her through the floodwaters.

Can Marilyn turn the storm to her advantage, keeping the police at bay and obliterating the evidence? Will she slip through the cracks of justice once more? In this high-stakes game of cat and mouse, the storm is just the beginning. Dive into a crime thriller where every moment is a battle for survival, and every decision could be her last.

Murder By Storm by Russell Little
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Plum Creek Press (October 22, 2024)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 298 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8990773325