Confidence Girl: The Letty Dobesh Chronicles

AN INTRODUCTION TO CONFIDENCE GIRL

I’ve written a lot of characters, and Letty Dobesh is hands-down my favorite.

I’d tried half a dozen times to execute what I thought was a cool idea...what if in the course of your daily life, you accidentally intercepted a hit, a contract killing—maybe you discovered that a hitman was going to knock someone off, or you were mistakenly tasked with carrying out the hit.

I kept trying to attack this idea and kept striking out. I couldn’t get any traction, and I was starting to become really frustrated.

This was the problem (I realized in hindsight): in all my failed attempts to write this story, my everyman, the person who accidentally gets themselves involved, was a good person. Which meant that logic dictated they would simply go straight to the police, identify the bad guy, save the good guy, story over. And that’s no fun.

The breakthrough for me on this story was when I realized that my hero couldn’t go to the police. That I would have to make that impossible. So I decided to make them a thief, on probation, and to have them in the midst of committing a crime when they discover the hitman and his intentions.

Sometimes you get lucky and characters come fully-formed and ready to talk to you.

Letty Dobesh, the anti-hero of “The Pain of Others” did not disappoint. She truly wrote herself, and I had so much fun with her, I followed up with two more novellas, all contained herein.

Letty’s a thief, yes, but she has a conscience. I love her. I hope you’ll love her too.