Just Right - A Tragic Tale of Lust & Betrayal

Writing a serialized noir murder mystery

Some ten or so years ago — everything about time and memory is off since Covid, so let’s say ten years — some friends and I had just wrapped up a grueling, wonderful two-year journey writing a multi-author serial in which we took our readers back to Oz. It was a fucked up Oz, a broken Oz, a bizarre, twisted Oz, and we loved it for two years. 138 episodes, each of us playing one of four characters, although as things progressed, I ended up playing (er, writing) as many as six characters. Nevertheless, without a script, without a net, without fail, we delivered episode after episode, even after we went on a long, six-month break in the middle of it all for reasons I can’t even begin to remember.

It was glorious. It was fun as fuck. It was monumental. It was called “Dorothy: Locked & Loaded” and you can start reading it right now because I think it’s worth another run.

Ten years ago, there was no such thing as Midjourney or Canva or half the amazing things that help authors deliver spectacular visuals. But now there are tools out there, and I love them. If you read me, you’ve seen them yourself.

What Came Next

When we were done, we needed another challenge — the four of us: a book lover from Dublin, a social worker from Florida, and a writer from Tennessee. So, I sat down and brainstormed a way that we could pull together a variety of classic fairy tale characters, modernize and subvert them, and throw them together in a much more condensed serial fiction series — a noir tale starring a detective and a cast of warped characters. 

I wrote a tight script this time. In D: L&L, we had all the time in the world, and partly because we had no script, it sprawled — in fun ways, but it sprawled. This time, I wanted it to be tight and just right, an intricate tale that brought all the characters together in a very narrow space, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in close contact with each other as storylines crisscrossed.

And Just Right was born. 

Writing the Story

I would play Wolfe, aka the Big Bad Wolfe, a broken-down, no good, New York City detective who had only one thing in his life that mattered — a singer, stripper, and kind-hearted girl who’d come to the big city to make her way in the world. Red, aka Little Red Riding Hood, who loved her man as hard as anyone could, and who walked away because there was no other choice.

And right in the very first moment, when the story opens, there she is, lying in the alley behind her place of employment, Smiley’s Cabaret, stabbed to death with a kitchen knife.

My friend from Tennessee was next. She played Goldi, aka Goldilocks, a struggling singer who, like Red, had come to the big city looking for a life, but unlike Red, she wanted fame and fortune. She wanted more — bright lights, a stage, diamonds and pearls. Only, it turns out, she was in love with Red, too, and in Episode 2, we found out what that love, when spurned, did to a person.

To create some distance, character number three was Gretel, from Hansel and Gretel, an FBI agent who’d been undercover so long with a human trafficking ring that she’d lost her way and her moral compass. My friend from Florida, who works with battered women, took on that role, and the idea of having a shelter in the city for women and children was born. How did Gretel connect to the shelter? Through the fourth and final character.

Our friend from Ireland played Ivan and his Giant, from Jack and the Beanstalk, a black-hearted old man from Russia who had no place in his heart for compassion or love, who cared nothing for the future of a human being, only what a person was worth in cold hard cash. He owned the shelter, and everyone there was a potential victim of his scheming.

Each of us wrote with our own voice, trying to nail that gritty, noir vibe and speak from the hearts of our characters, who they were and what they wanted.

We sustained things for about twenty episodes back in the day, and then things went a little sideways, and the story sat on my old Blogger account and in my Google Drive unfinished. Not everything works out, but all good things come to an end. I decided in August 2023 it was time to end it, to finish the story.

Over six months’ time, with some episodes done and others needing some editing, I started reposting the story to Medium. I created amazing title graphics and videos using AI, Canva, and other tools that didn’t exist ten years ago and added that to the mix, giving our characters new life. Then, around episode 15, when I had a good feel for the story again, I dumped a few episodes to pull the story together faster than the original script suggested. Having some completed episodes was nice, but it didn’t make delivering the story in whole that much easier. There was still a lot of ground to cover, and having to write four different characters and trying to match the original writing styles from earlier episodes took a lot of work.

And it’s done now this week — a few introductions, a guide on how to read the story, thirty-four episodes, and now this bit of history. But there’s a little more to say yet.

Wolfe, Goldi, Gretel, Ivan — Made with Midjourney & Canva

Here’s where it all started — in a blurb written forever ago.

In the depths of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, four people coexist in a cesspool of lust and betrayal — Wolfe, a broken cop with a history of questionable behavior; Goldi — a young woman trying to survive her dreams and the death of her lover; Gretel — an undercover agent struggling to remain true to her oath; Ivan — a horror of a man who will do anything to get what he wants.

There’s more, much more, but I won’t post any major spoilers.

If you read the story, I hope you enjoyed it. I know I enjoyed writing it, although I wish I could have finished it with my friends. That said, I’m sure there will be more of the like before long from me. For now, you can read all of Just Right on Medium, if you have an account. Or you can start reading all of Just Right on my website here for free, and I plan to put it all together into a book on Amazon.

Thanks for reading. — SJ Stone