Jade Lee | Guess What I Plotted Over Breakfast!

Most Wednesday mornings, I have breakfast with my bestie who is NOT a writer. She’s a finance professor and we used to live across the street from one another.

Guess what we talked about this morning:

A. Aliens in my backyard who pooped oil. Or maybe it was an oil-like disgusting substance that is now all over my yard.

B. How her son and my daughter look great together in pictures but would be disastrous together in a relationship. Or maybe not…

C. My daughter’s cat vs. mouse adventures. Or was that how do you get a mouse away from the cat who caught it?

D. How to corner the commodities futures market in…er…something.

Answer: All of the above — but mostly D! Our conversation wanders wildly all over the place, but the bulk of our conversation this morning was on the commodities futures market. Seriously. She had to explain it to me (about three times) before I understood. And then we developed a bad guy conspiracy to corner the market on something.

So what market will be threatened by my bad guy?

A. A true to life story from the headlines: treasury bonds

B. A sexier true to life story from the headlines: silver

C. Something glitzy: emeralds

D. Something prosaic: soybeans

Answer: Soybeans. Yes, since the book series (a Kathy Lyons series as yet unnamed and unwritten to be released by the Covet line at Entangled) is set in Illinois, we wanted something very midwest. Something prosaic. What is more Illinois prosaic than soybeans? Possibly corn, but that stuff at least grows tall and has a line in an Oklahoma song. Nobody loves soybeans!

Once we decided on the book storyline, we started guessing what would be really funny markets to conquer. Remember these are bad guys! So guess which is my favorite:

A. Rare tiger parts

B. Oil pooped by aliens

C. Star Trek collectables

D. Benedict Cumberbatch