The setting was perfect. The Oddfellow’s Mausoleum in Santa Rosa Memorial Park. I had been invited to do a reading at the Mystery Writer’s annual Halloween event. A reading of my work. At night. In a hundred-year-old tomb without electricity.

In the weeks leading up to the event, I prepared as much as I could.

I rehearsed. And rehearsed. I rehearsed until I had things down cold (forgive the pun).

When I stepped up to the candle-lit podium, everything clicked. The words flowed. I felt the tension of the crowd rise as I told the story of a woman possessed by something much worse than the dead. And when I hit the final word, the audience gasped. Actually gasped. The reading was everything I hoped it would be.

The only problem?

The chapter I read that night no longer exists in my book.

It was cut.

I killed my darling.

What was wrong with it?

That was the heart-breaking part. Nothing was wrong with it. In fact, it was some of my best writing. And that wasn’t just my “egocentric little scribbler’s heart” talking. My editor agreed.

The reason I cut it was simple.

The first chapter didn’t work. It didn’t do what first chapters were supposed to do: launch the readers into the world.

It was a dead-end, a pretty little cul-de-sac and nothing more.

It had to go. I had to let it go and that killed me.

It really KILLED me.

It wound up being the right choice. The rest of the story works much better now it’s gone. Oh, it still hurts. When I think about the reading on that magical night, I get a twinge. But I take consolation in the fact that the chapter is still with me, buried in my iCloud tomb of discarded drafts.

And who knows?

Maybe it will rise from the dead and come back in a different form...