I loved your story, patton-you really should try to get it published.
Someday, I hope to write a novel about this rural Peyton Place we live in-I will call it "The Winter People", which is what we all jokingly call ourselves (permanent residents as opposed to the "summer people" and "townies" who leave at the end of summer). I've written short stories and poetry for magazines in the past, but never a novel-I haven't written anything for anyone but myself for years, though I already have a partial outline of the thing-I want it to be more like stories about individual characters and their relationships, strung together by a common thread of living in the same small community, rather than a central story and plot with character interactions as an aside. Might not work for me, but it did work in "Peyton Place", "Parrish" and several other novels about rural goings-on...
You need at least two illicit love affairs. One with a spolied, home wrecking, adulterous, raven haied vixen. An addled grandparent locked up in the attic or basement. A Family Secret (Dad is a Conservative living in a Liberal Community, or vice versa) And two young people falling in love, preferably a male and a female.
Should sell pretty well, Texan.
Jack.
Um, I was looking at jack's response...and, um, nevermind. LOL.
You have the talent, too, T5!
fox has had coverage of some woman going nuts on a police cruiser and i thought of your nutball neigbhor.