Dear Reader,
Today’s guest author, Linda MacKillop, lives and writes in the Chicagoland area. She has worked in broadcasting, publishing, taught English at a community college, and delivered many newspapers. Her debut novel, The Forgotten Life of Eva Gordon, came out in May. In this contemporary novel, Eva Gordon is an older woman who wants to run away from her life because her memory is failing, and she's forced to live with her spunky granddaughter whose life is overflowing with misfit Characters.
Be sure to enter Linda's giveaway. (Details are at the end of her column.)
Welcome to the book club, Linda…
Hard Jobs
I spent many years working hard jobs while trying to earn money for college. For a time, I delivered newspapers in the early morning hours. Later I worked the graveyard shift at an old-fashioned answering service, monitoring calls for doctors, AAA, and other businesses who needed 24-hour service. The scariest part of that job? Waking doctors at 2am when your "emergency" didn't fit their definition.
My most risky job experience came while I still had the paper route. People were supposed to pay by leaving money in envelopes, but as anyone who has ever had a paper route knows, collecting from your customers is the difficult, thankless part of the job.
One day, I got fed up with customers who wouldn't pay me and went door to door. Most folks respectively paid me.
Then I arrived at a dilapidated trailer sitting at the outskirts of town. The customer hadn't paid in months, and I was mad. I'd had never breached the chain-link fencing surrounding his place, only leaving the paper in the designated mailbox. But on this day, I opened that gate and marched to the front door. When a scruffy man answered, I told him I was collecting for his newspaper.
"How'd you get in here?" he asked
"I walked through your gate." At that moment, two furious, barking pit bulls raced around the corner of the trailer, charging at me.
"Get inside quick," he said, pulling me inside the trailer.
I'm not sure which of my decisions that day was worse, walking through that gate or allowing him to pull me inside. (Did I mention a serial killer was murdering women in my city? Later we would learn he was Ted Bundy.) But there I stood inside this stranger's home with no way to walk out the front door without being mauled.
He began to laugh. "I can't believe you had the guts to come in here. I'm paying you everything I owe." He left the room chuckling and collected his wallet. When he returned, he handed me a wad of cash before tying up his dogs outside so I could safely leave. Weeks later, I quit the paper route.
When I finished college, thinking my late-night shifts were over, I took a job as a master control engineer for a television station--and, of course, worked the late-night shift until the wee hours of the dark mornings.
Today, I never take for granted my day job writing safely at my desk.
I love to hear from readers and respond to emails. I'm giving away five copies of my novel, The Forgotten Life of Eva Gordon, and hope you enter to win. Just send an email with your mailing address (in case you win) to [email protected].
-- Linda MacKillop
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
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