Murder Thy Neighbor (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780615707082)

When I was a bit younger I attended night classes for five years. An English teacher or writer, trying to pick up a few extra dollars, would usually run these classes in their homes on a weekday night for six weeks. One teacher, six to twelve students. Each week we would submit a short story. The teacher would read two or three parts of submitted stories, then the floor would open for comments, moving around the circle in a clockwise pattern for approximately five minutes each, to praise or criticize their work. If you did not have thick skin, this was no place for you. Many quit after their short story was read and commented on. I am guessing that they where never to attend another. The teacher was the last to comment. The instructor also policed the group so that one person could not rattle on about nothing. I found the classes a good way to understand that I could be making the same mistake as the other writers. It really helped me to write with a much more coherent and comprehensive style. Some criticism I received I took and others I discarded. I always stayed to the end of the six weeks as I learned as much as i could from others errors and successes, as well as my own. Classes that started out with twelve participants, would usually end up with around five at the end. Most of the students were women. Being a single man at that time, I found this not to be a class that I dreaded. One of these nights, I handed in a rather a intense short story that could of offended some of the students. When it was time for the leader of the group to read my paper, he totally distorted what I had written. Perhaps the subject matter was too intense for him, or he thought it too intense for his students. I took objection to this. I said nothing and in discussing my situation with one of my friends, he suggested I turned in a short story about a student taking revenge on a teacher who butcher his short story. At first I laughed, and thought what a great idea. After giving it some thought I imagined; what if something happening to that teacher and me with a written confession in his possession. I was the one, who could of found himself in some non-fiction real trouble.