I've found my muse to be a fickle creature.\u00a0 Sometimes, I'll be working to finish one project and there she will perch, on my shoulder, luring me towards a new idea.\u00a0 Other times, I'm in need of the right word or phrase or image and I can't find her anywhere.\u00a0 She likes to strike when I least expect her.<\/p>\n
That happened to me a couple of years ago.\u00a0 I was at a CLE (Continuing Legal Education) Seminar.\u00a0 I'd long ago decided CLE's are how the bar association mines money from its members on a regular basis.\u00a0 After all, dues only get paid once a year!\u00a0 SC is a mandatory bar state, so our bar gets its dues and it gets all that CLE money too.\u00a0A 3 hour\u00a0seminar costs several hundred dollars\u00a0and lawyers have to have 14 hours a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anyway, in addition to mining for money,\u00a0the seminars herd a group of lawyers who don't want to be in a room into the room.\u00a0 We sit and fume and sit some more.\u00a0 But a couple of years ago, the oddest thing happened. My muse showed up at a CLE!\u00a0 A brilliant colleague was presenting a seminar on a statute none of us had heard of before.\u00a0 The statute\u00a0makes it a felony\u00a0to entice a minor to commit a sexual act by e-mail.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mind you,\u00a0all you have to do to commit the felony is press send.\u00a0 A construction worker employed on a temporary job site can be playing around with his computer in Hilton Head,\u00a0exchanging naughty messages with an older than her years\u00a0Carolina teenager.\u00a0 He might agree to meet her at Club \"You're Screwed\" the next night.\u00a0 He doesn't go, and never intended to - he left to drive four hours to get\u00a0home early the next morning.\u00a0 Stupidity, but no actual intent to do anything.\u00a0 It doesn't matter.\u00a0 The communication is the crime!\u00a0 (I won't bore you all with the group's collective opinion that the statute can not be constitutional).<\/p>\n
Muse sat there and insisted I read the statute.\u00a0 Lo and behold, at 17, a minor can consent to exchange naughty e-mails.\u00a0 It puts the power in the minor's hand.\u00a0 Before I got home that night, I'd composed a mental outline of my novel, E-mail Enticement<\/em>.\u00a0 It features a couple of trials centered around a romance between a 30 something billionaire and a 17 year old Carolina Girl.\u00a0 I set it in Myrtle Beach where the billionaire owned a number of hotels - we have lots of those.\u00a0\u00a0It presents\u00a0a situation where the power that would normally be in the hands of the older man, landed squarely in the lap of the young girl.\u00a0<\/p>\n I had a blast writing E-Mail<\/em> even if it was cursed by bad timing.\u00a0 I finished it right before one of the Congressmen got in hot water for naughty e-mails to a page.\u00a0 Sometimes, reality bites.\u00a0 And sometimes, muses show up in the least likely places.<\/p>\n Bad timing and all, E-Mail Enticement<\/em> is a great story\u00a0about forbidden love, trials where truth is relative,\u00a0reality may not be real and where power, like muses, can land in the most unlikely places.\u00a0<\/p>\n Give E-mail<\/em>\u00a0a read sometime.\u00a0 My muse recommends it. She can be quirky, but she's not completely insane.\u00a0 Me on the other hand...........<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I've found my muse to be a fickle creature.\u00a0 Sometimes, I'll be working to finish one project and there she will perch, on my shoulder, luring me towards a new idea.\u00a0 Other times, I'm in need of the right word or phrase or image and I can't find her anywhere.\u00a0 She likes to strike when ...continue reading \"Muses Hide In Odd Places\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}