Blurb: Life as a junior reporter wasn’t what she’d hoped it would be. In her long months with the local paper, she’d been stuck with tedious local planning disputes and minor court cases. So when a mildly quirky story with a possible supernatural angle landed in her lap, she had to make the most of it. But she was about to find out that sometimes reporters have to be prepared to do anything to get the story.
Excerpt from Werewolves of Lust:
People sometimes tell me that they’re jealous when it comes to my career. That jealousy isn’t to do with the money I earn, which is a pittance, or the awards and recognition I’ve won (none so far) but because they say I always knew what I wanted to do.
They’re right about that. My friends from High School and college kind of drifted into their current jobs, but I was always determined that I was going to be a journalist. I’ve always loved to write, but I found fiction, poetry, that kind of thing deadly dull. It seemed pointless to be writing about a made-up world. I wanted my writing to focus on the real world. I wanted to know the truth, to find things out, and to be the first to get the truth. I wanted my name to be on a story that would change people’s lives.
Where my friends get it wrong is in thinking I’ve made it. Yes, I have a job as a journalist, and yes, I do, technically, get to write stories about the real world. But in three years as a junior reporter for the Chronicle, I haven’t broken a single news story of any consequence.
It doesn’t help that this is the dullest state in the whole country, and my particular corner of it is duller than most. I kind of knew that would be the case when I applied for the job. I thought I was being smart. While all my peers were struggling as interns at big city papers, scrapping and fighting for the chance to do anything other than make the coffee and run errands, I would be out there in the real world, building my reputation, getting experience, honing my skills.
Turns out that I’m doing the same as them. It took six months for my editor to trust me enough to do a story on my own, and that was about a zoning application. After six months of covering local business and town administration stories, I graduated to minor crime stories: shoplifting, fender benders, the kind of stuff that no-one reads, even in a small town. And that’s where I stuck.
I tried asking my editor for better stories, I tried begging, I even tried flirting with him. None of that worked, and my feeble attempt at flirting, which made me feel like the lowest girl on the planet ended with him just raising an eyebrow and me mumbling and stumbling out of his office in the ridiculously high heels that I only ever wore at parties.
Despite his refusal to warm to my terrible attempts at flirting, I was pretty sure that he only kept me around the office for aesthetics. I’m not boasting here, but I am the only young woman in that place, and sure, I’m no supermodel, but I have a kind of Taylor Swift type innocent look that some guys seem to find attractive. I generally don’t play up to it, because that’s not how I like to roll, but short of getting plastic surgery, a boob reduction or wearing a paper bag over my face, there wasn’t much I could do about it. Be patient, the older reporters told me. Your time will come.
Turns out they were right. After three years of writing about stories no-one would ever read, while playing the role of the office eye candy, I finally got the summons.
My editor, Malcolm ‘The Beast’ Anderson, called me into the office one Friday morning. He had a smirk on his face. That smirk was often a warning sign, I had learned. He got his nickname for the ferocious, but fortunately rare tantrums he threw. Apparently, he used to be a lot worse, when he worked for the Bugle. That’s why he’d ended up on a small-town newspaper. The smirk was sometimes a signal that he was about to erupt, so when I walked into his office, I was desperately racking my brains to come up with possible mistakes I had made.
“Sit,” he said, still smirking.
I did as I was told, bracing myself.
“What you working on at the moment?”
“Nothing much,” I said. He grunted.
“There’s something here for you,” he said, handing over a printout of an email. He always printed things out. I once made the mistake of suggesting that it wasn’t a very environmentally friendly way to do things; a comment that resulted in an epic five-minute rant and my returning to my desk shaking.
“What is it?”
“Livestock deaths in Stuartsville.”
My heart sank. At least my tedious work was largely confined to the town, with access to coffee, Wi-fi and bars. Stuartsville was in the middle of nowhere.
“Okay, but I don’t know anything about livestock. I mean, farming isn’t really my thing.”
Malcolm looked at me.
“You don’t have a thing. You do what you’re told.”
“Yes of course, but I mean…is there a story.”
“There might be,” he said, smirking. “Though probably not. The locals seem to think there’s more to this than meets the eye. There has been talk of a werewolf.”
“A werewolf.”
He nodded, watching me carefully.
“I…well…I guess I could…check it out.”
“Yep. Get as much mileage out of it as you can. One of those mystery pieces. People like that kind of stuff. If you do a good job, I’ll put you on page four.”
Page four might not sound like much, but it was about ten pages nearer the front page than my name usually appeared. So, I tried to sound relatively enthusiastic and said I’d do my best.
Malcolm smiled.
“I hope so,” he said. “I look forward to seeing it.”
