News flash, “Kill Words” is passing the forty thousand mark with just six days to go. Here’s a draft first paragraphs:
I’m named after my grandmother Gertrude Maisey Warner, the revered matriarch of the family. They called her Gerty, but I’m called Maisey. I guess my parents could tell even then that I would not be able to fill her shoes. She married at eighteen and had ten kids all of them growing up to be upstanding citizens. My uncle Bill is a neurosurgeon, uncle Jack head of mathematics at the university, my aunt Becca a CEO of a medical device company. My own mother not only won ‘teacher of the year’ five years in a row for the Midwest region, but she started a non-profit to combat illiteracy in the inner-city.
I went to college to be an elementary school teacher, but I’ve only landed a job as a teacher’s aide so far and that’s because of my mother’s connections. There’s no chance I’ll be getting married any time soon so forget about having ten kids. I’m about to turn twenty-five so maybe I’m just in a mid-twenties crisis. Is that a real thing? I shouldn’t go there. I’ve got a lot of reasons to be happy.
