Seventeen Too Many

     When Megan was in 11th grade she needed to write a short story for an English class.  Writing has always come easily for her (I like to think that she got some of her skills from me), and she put together a tale about a serial killer who ends up in a small town as a deputy in the sheriff's office. As the story unfolds, it is revealed that the killer (Lilly) had a rough childhood and when she finally thought she met the man of her dreams and married him, her husband loved his cats more than he loved her. She ended up killing him and over the years she had killed sixteen more people and the common link was that they all had a cat.

     This lady hadn't killed for quite a while and was doing a good job as deputy but her life was shattered when the other deputy (Colt) bought a cat to keep him company.  Thus began the plot to kill him as well.  She sent a message, saying that Hox (that is the name the killer was known as) was in their small town and intended to kill someone. Of course the sheriff and Colt had no idea it was her and she plays along and acts like she is intent on finding this killer.  In the end, the sheriff and Colt figure out that it is her and she demands a gunfight with Colt.  They meet in an alley and when the noise and smoke subside, they are both lying on the ground.  Eventually, Colt gets to his feet and walks over to Lilly's dead body, and says, "seventeen deaths is seventeen too many."

    Megan handed it in, got a good grade on it, chalked it up as a pretty stupid story but that she had fun with and forgot about it.  Last semester in her Honors Comp class at college, her professor told them that they could get extra credit if they wrote a play.  He said that the plays would be entered into a playwriting competition as well. Megan heard the extra credit part and figured that was easy enough.  She pulled out her story from 11th grade, rewrote it as a play and turned it in and never gave it a second thought.

    In February she received an email from her professor saying that she had won first place, would receive $150.00 and that the drama department was going to act it out on stage. Her initial reaction was one of disbelief.  She actually emailed her professor back and asked if he was sure he had the correct person.  He replied, "your play was titled 'Seventeen Too Many', right"?  After it had sunk in that she had really won, she was kind of embarrassed, because she thought that the play was just dumb and pretty cheesy. She hoped that no one who knew her would realize she wrote it. 

She met with the cast and they made a few changes and then she didn't hear a whole lot more about it, until her professor emailed her the dates that the play would be performed and asked her to come so they could interview her afterward.  She was horrified. The week before the play, she texted me this picture:

 

 



Me:  This just made my day!

Megan: I’m considering taking them all down.

Me: It’s fantastic! You are a star!

Megan: It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just on bulletin boards. But no, it’s on doors too.

Me: Oh my goodness. This is CRAZY. Do people actually come to this?

Megan: I hope not.

Me: Did they ask info from you to write a bio?

Megan: O goodness no. That’d be terrible.

 

Well, as it turns out they did ask her to write a bio and I think in the end she felt pride in her play being selected as the winner.  Steve and I went with Megan to the play on Thursday evening and yes it was a little silly and not many people showed up but we enjoyed it and were glad we went.  Her brothers wanted her to record it for them so on Thursday evening we tried with one of our cameras.  The picture quality was awful so she used a different camera on Friday evening and got a little better picture.  She is working on editing and adding captions, and will possibly post it on her Facebook or blog some day.  On  Thursday evening, when they interviewed her afterward, I recorded that as well.  Again, you can't really see the picture but you can hear what they are saying.  I thought I would share it.  Who knows, maybe someday, Megan will be a famous writer, and this will be dug out of the archives and heralded as her first live interview as an author!