The Hook, A Quirky Magical Realism Short Story: Creature Feature Writer, #1

By Rebecca Ferrell Porter

Alex Trefarro was born to expose corruption, but her career as an investigative reporter takes a sharp turn when Grandma dies and leaves her a small fortune. Sounds great until manipulative Grandma twists the blade. Forced to return to a quirky northern Wisconsin town, Alex smells a story, but not the one she expected.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rebecca Ferrell Porter
• Release date: Mar 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781943844616

Book preview

Chapter 1

Alex peeled back the foil on the bottle and reached for the corkscrew. She didn’t need anything fancy, just a little moscato to file down the edges. Grabbing a glass, she padded to the back porch. It wasn’t the view she had imagined she would have the night before her life as an investigative reporter began, but it would do. She poured the wine and put her feet up on the rail. Of course, the story wasn’t what she had imagined either, but it was too late to stop the presses. The delivery team would be folding the paper and stuffing it in plastic sleeves to protect it from the early morning dew by now. Her fate lay in the hearts of the tiny readership of the Pickers Point Press.

All around her, male fireflies floated up from their hiding places in the grass, each one sending out a love call written in light in hopes of a flash or two from the earthbound females. How simple it all seemed. Life in the northern woods of Wisconsin rarely deviated from the path, but all that was about to change. Alex looked up on the sliver of moon. Razor thin, it reflected her concerns. Would they take her seriously, or laugh her out of the county? Either way, she would know soon enough. She curled her toes around the vine of a morning glory. Grandma never would have allowed the garden to get to such a state. Memories of hot summer nights spent sleeping under the stars on Grandma’s back porch, too excited to sleep, yet too exhausted to keep her eyes open flooded her mind. Alex had come full circle.

Her timing had never been good. With two broken engagements and a crushing mortgage acquired three months before the bottom fell out of the real estate market, she had also managed to come of age in the era of the rogue blogger. She didn’t remember when she had decided she wanted to be an investigative reporter, but it didn’t matter. It’s what she was.  

Adorned with a shiny new degree from the University of Wisconsin’s Journalism School, Alex had snagged a juicy paid internship at the Young Madisonian Magazine, something unheard of in today’s climate of dwindling subscriptions and robotic talking heads. She had celebrated by purchasing a primo condo overlooking the domed capital, a smaller replica of the one in Washington, DC. Alex still remembered how she felt that first night as she sat on her deck with an expensive bottle of wine. Alexandra Trefarro had been on her way—to nowhere.

Ten months later, and with nary a nibble on her stellar resume, Alex was ready