Senior Citizen Scams are Raking in Billions $...Your Inheritance could Vanish overnight!

When I joined the HUB writing community, I found myself rummaging through my warehouse for a two decade old manuscript. I calculated that there some nuggets in it that would make nice short stories. I wrote “Tiny Tim and the TV” and the next thing I knew I was being nominated as a best writer. Anita Sue was one of the first to read it and she commented that she was disappointed with the ending. She was a new Hubber too, but I immediately could see that she was a talented writer after looking over her Hubs. I had an uneasy feeling about the ending and it only took another writer to point it out. With a few strokes of the keyboard to touch up the story, I went from a downbeat ending to an upbeat ending. The editors at Hub agreed and gave it the best fiction award for that month.

I pulled a few more gems from the old manuscript, posted them at HUB, and then decided I could rewrite the manuscript. The original manuscript was closer to a diary than something readable. I did send it to a professional reading service in 1990 and the reader’s notes were still attached. I agreed that it was not written properly and set it aside and had forgotten about it.

Deciding to write a novel is a major decision.

I had written “Seeds from Heaven” and “The Gold of Mansa Musa” and felt I might incorporate the old manuscript into the series. I had dropped hints that the main character, Raymond Lancaster, had done a year of teaching, however I really had not planned to write an entire novel around the idea. But here it was! There was an incredible amount of story here and I could pull out the best ideas and throw most of it away. There was one glaring problem—no subplot. With my new skills at writing novels, I knew I needed a subplot. What would it be? Until I had a subplot, I could not begin.

Then, I saw it on the 6:30 news....

Two sisters had been trying to save their ninety-year-old mom from having her million dollar estate stolen from her by shysters. It was an outrages scam of the hghest order! Lawyers had guided her to a senior citizen management company and the money quickly disappeared in a morass of fees to the estate. The million bucks were gone inside of a few months and the court backed up the shysters.

I had settled my parent’s estate the year before and quickly found myself surrounded by lawyers who circled around like vultures. Yep, the very first provision of Florida State law was that “a client must be represented by a lawyer.” I had read several books on the subject and even had the forms in hand that were required to do the probate process. It was incredibly simple. Five minutes work and I could do it—nothing to it. I knew that the lawyers most often had the hired help, the paraprofessionals, handle this stuff. It was bread and butter work for lawyers. When I called to have it done, I never did talk to a lawyer. The paraprofessional handled the whole thing and I shopped around for the best price for the five minutes work—$12 hundred dollars. At the high end was $25 hundred dollars. Yep, it paid to shop around.

With this experience in hand, I sympathized with the two sisters standing beside their mom all crippled up in a wheel chair, on oxygen support, barely able to speak to the reporter. “They tell me my money is all gone,” she whispered. Yep, a life time of work, gone with the wind, and her daughters would never see a dime.

In that I like my readers to walk away with important knowledge, I studied this scam and discovered that it was popping up all over the country. It was a multi-billion dollar enterprise. I could write this as the subplot and my readers would end up wiser.

Yep, I was happy with the novel.

I had something for senior citizens along with the heartfelt teaching story. It all worked well with the “Seeds from Heaven” premise too. Yes, perhaps God had something to do with it. It will be up to readers to decide.

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"Lean against the Wind" is the first five part installment of “Seeds from Heaven.”

Read more about “Lean against the Wind” an eBook now available worldwide.

Purchase Lean against the Wind at Amazon.com.

Critcal Reviews of Fantasy books by Jenny (including Lean against the Wind & Watchdogg)

"Lean against the Wind" review by Linda Kolhagen

"Lean against the Wind" and "Up the Down Staircase"

"The Carrot and publishing your novel." RJ's experience with publishing a novel will make you laugh and weep.