Wanted: oddball family members …

… to attend a family reunion

November is approaching, and I’m working on plans for this year’s National Novel Writing Month project. I’ve been successful the past two years with Murder at the Community College and Murder at the Yacht Club, with a reliable formula: I create a character who is really unlikable and lowdown and probably deserves to depart this earth; I have a dozen or more characters who have conflicts with this person and who have very good reasons for wanting him dead; I kill him off in an interesting way; I then spend 50,000 or more words going through all of the suspects, sorting out red herrings, and having my main characters go through various exciting plot twists.

This year, I’m going with a topic Mom suggested shortly after returning from such an event in Arkansas, Murder at the Family Reunion. My main character was an only child whose parents are both dead, but her boyfriend comes from a big, boisterous Irish family, whom she is meeting for the first time at the reunion. There are a few Italians and others who have married in, but there’s certainly going to be a lot of blarney flying around.

Here’s where I’m asking for help from my readers: If you have a story of an eccentric relative or a bizarre event at a family reunion, tell me. I promise I will change details to protect the identity of the guilty. The family involved doesn’t need to be Irish, or any particular other ethnic group … just, umm … interesting. I’m especially interested in characters who are slightly off-kilter.

Anybody who provides a story that I can use will get a copy of my manuscript, as of December 1, 2007, as a reward for the help.