The Suggestion Box (Volume 1)

List #1 (Crime Fiction)

The List

Name: Tina

Time: Early Morning

Place: Rural countryside

Object: Dead quail in the road

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An Article from the Writer's Monthly Magazine, introducing Tina Tilley and her literary sensation, "The Dead of Morning."

To the end of her days, Tina Tilley, when asked about the inspiration for her New York Times Bestseller, The Dead of Morning, she would always answer, "It was a quail in the road."

The novel, centering around a dead woman found abandoned on a back-country road with no identifying features beyond an mysterious old locket, thrilled readers and skyrocketed Tina's career to the stars. The book has outsold every other fiction novel published at the time, has been nominated for the Agatha Christie Award, and rumors circulate of an impending film adaptation.

Tina tells the story this way:

"I was driving down a back country road on the way to visit my sister. It was a foggy morning, and difficult to see. When a roundish shape appeared at the middle of the road I quickly skidded around it, and only upon retrospect did I realize that it was only an animal, and dead already--a quail, struck down by some unfortunate driver. My imagination ran wild with it, and I began to think, What if it had been a woman? A woman whom no one knew? A woman with a purpose that ended up getting her killed, but no one readily knows that purpose? By the time I reached my sister's house, I was in such a state that I couldn't speak two words from her, I just sat down on her porch and began to write. Thus The Dead of Morning was born--of a quail."