In late 2023, after my teenage boys told me I needed to get a life and stop spending so much time with them, I strapped my butt back into the writer’s seat. For years, I’d toyed with the idea of a teen horror B-movie screenplay—something in the vein of Scream—with the working title Crawlspace. The title still gives me goosebumps.

The story centered on a 22-year-old college grad who inherits a mysterious old wooden house in the middle of nowhere. At first, she has fun exploring the house and its surroundings—until strange things began happening, including ominous noises reverberating from beneath the floorboards.

But then, one day, something strange happened in real life: my protagonist started talking to me.

“Ew,” she said, “you’re like a fifty-something, dirty-old man writing about a cute girl like me—probably just to get me slaughtered at the end of the movie.”

I listened. Sort of.

“For one,” she continued, “this isn’t a screenplay. It should be a novel. And two, your protagonist’s name is Nora—and she’s not some naïve twenty-something. She’s a super-smart, super-fine forty-year-old molecular scientist/badass.”

What really convinced me to abandon the horror B-movie was her final parting shot: “Oh, and by the way—you’ll make a lot more money writing a novel than a screenplay.”

That sealed it.

We said our goodbyes—or maybe it was “see you later”—and she wandered off into the sunset, wearing black leggings and clutching a 40-ounce Stanley Cup tumbler.

And that’s how Lake Lands – The Velvet Cartel Chronicles was born.