Yipee! I’ve written the last words of the rough draft of my latest fantasy book. Titled The Unicorn Agenda, it’s a detective story featuring private investigator Mickey Holmes.
Mickey’s been around the block a few times and is good at his work. However, he does have a peculiar talent for seeing unicorns and elves, fantasy creatures that appear to inhabit our world but that everyone but Mickey seems oblivious to.
Working hard to keep his business afloat, Mickey gets a chance to work for Alexander Stuyvesant, a rich investment counselor. Stuyvesant suspects his wife, Samantha, is having an affair and wants Mickey to look into the situation.
As he begins tailing Samantha, Mickey finds that the faerie creatures are interested in Samantha as well. With research help from his friends Jessica and Bart, Mickey finds conflicting information that makes him question his assignment. That’s when the murders start, and Mickey himself becomes a suspect.
I like detective stories, and I’ve had an itch to try one. A couple years ago at a local writers group meeting, Danielle Thomas, our group leader offered a writing prompt to start with the words, “One day when I was walking down the street . . .” and write on.
The words “I saw a unicorn” popped into my head. I wrote a page or so with a city setting with none of the passersby noticing the unicorn or the sneer it gave the narrator. Pretty forgettable stuff, but for some reason the idea stuck in my head. On one late-night perambulation through the dusty memory cubby holes of my mind I stumbled over the idea that it was a private investigator who saw the unicorn on the street.
At that time I was working on a book called Shackles of a Hero, another fantasy tale set in a far off world of magic. I dashed off a couple of quick chapters of Unicorn Agenda just so I wouldn’t lose the idea. Although I tried to keep plugging on Shackles, more ideas for Unicorn kept popping up and needing attention. Now Unicorn is finished while Shackles is still cooling its heels with about eighty percent of it done.
Let me revise that last statement. A rough draft of Shackles is done, but it needs revising and some good editing before I would think of trying to sell it. Still, I had such a good time writing it, I put the first few chapters up at Unicorn Agenda Preview. to get some reactions. If you’d like to give me feedback on it, feel free: William L. Culbertson.