Top 8 of '08, with Guest Blogger Anita Daher

Happy New Year!

More on that later...first, let's take a peek at YA author Anita Daher's Top 8 of '08. Anita is a writer, speaker, horsewoman, editor , mother to two beautiful girls -- and wearer (as you might suspect) of many hats. Here's her contribution to the fun:

Because of the nature of my writing—thrillers for teens and middle grade readers, often involving crimes—I draw inspiration from real life news stories that happen around the world. During my daily troll of favourite news sites, I occasionally save stories in an idea file for possible future use. Here are eight stories—with actual headlines, searchable headlines in case you want more detail—that caught my eye in 2008:

1. Driver dodges landing plane; his second close call with aircraft in 25 years

A man who dodged the “Gimli Glider” when he was eleven, almost had another plane land on top of him as he drove along a highway just north of Winnipeg. “Gimli Glider” is the nickname given to a Boeing 767, which glided to a safe landing on an abandoned Gimli, MB airstrip after running out of fuel east of Winnipeg.

* Unlike the stories below, this is not a crime story, but is of extra interest to me because my father worked for Transport Canada out of Winnipeg at the time of the 1983 Gimli Glider incident (one day after my birthday, btw), and was one of the first called in to investigate the scene.

2. Inmate escapes German jail in box

A convicted drug dealer escaped from a jail in Germany by mailing himself out in a parcel. “The 42-year-old Turkish citizen - who was serving a seven-year sentence - had been making stationery with other prisoners destined for the shops. At the end of his shift, the inmate climbed into a cardboard box and was taken out of prison by express courier.”

3. A dejected widower's unwitting slip into gangland

A lonely, depressed, blues-loving grandfather meets a new friend in a bar, and unwittingly becomes a gunrunner for the man’s son—a member of a notorious street gang. He pled guilty, and served time. Later, while testifying as witness at a gang member trial, a judge proclaimed that he was not guilty, because he had no knowledge of what he was smuggling. The man still listens to blues, but misses the friend—the man he thought was his friend.

Care to read more? Let me tempt you by saying that one of the top crime stories of the year actually involved Anita herself! Check it all out HERE in her blog.

Thanks for playing, Anita!

~kc