Page 196 of As The Shifter World Turns

“Fine. What could go wrong?” My grizzly friend sighed. “But if he sees or hears anything and needs CPR, that’s on you. ”

Daire

I waved a printout in front of Micah’s face. “This.” My friend and former business partner—though technically he owned part of Sunshine Manor so we were still partners—was changing his daughter’s diaper and I scrunched up my nose at the smell. Considering Elune was tiny, her poop sure packed a powerful aroma.

“What am I looking at?” After putting a clean diaper on Elune, he gave her to me and washed his hands.

“Our next big project.” It was a motel with twenty rooms in town. The owner had recently passed away and his kids were looking to sell. I drove past and it was in good condition and had been in use until a few weeks ago when the owner was taken to hospital.

I’d pressed my face against a few windows and it was typical 1970s style based on the carpet and wallpaper and my guess the bathrooms would be decked out in avocado green. Though for some consumers, the 70s was the in thing—or never went out of fashion—but the place needed a huge renovation.

Micah sat in his favorite armchair and put his daughter on his lap while he studied what I’d printed out and then went online to check out the site. “I don’t want to run a motel so we’d have to get a manager and be hands off. Or we renovate and sell for a huge profit. And we’d need our accountant to go through the books.” He rubbed his chin. “But renovating is such a pain.”

Running a motel wasn’t on my bucket list either. “Here’s my big idea. We get people to renovate it for free.”

He tilted his head. “And how are we going to do that?”

Grabbing the remote, I turned on the TV and ran through the reality shows. Micah wasn’t a fan but I loved this stuff. “We get a couple or maybe three friends to renovate one room. We do half the rooms so ten groups at once, and they can live in the ten unrenovated rooms while they’re doing the work. We give them a certain amount of money and a time frame, and they fix up the rooms, within guidelines.” I didn’t want dinosaur-themed rooms which I had seen on one program. “Then we judge the winner and that group gets a pile of money.”

“And the point is what?”

I scrolled through more reality programs. There were cooking, sewing, traveling, escape rooms, gardening and renovating ones among others. “We sell the idea to a producer or TV production company and make big bucks. If it’s a success, we can do another similar project.”

“I don’t know, Daire.”

“How about me, you, and Archer go and look at the motel. I’ll call the owner and make an appointment.” During my time making the gardening videos, I’d been in touch with a lot of people who had connections in the world of TV production. I was sure I could find someone or a group of someones to pitch to.

“Okay, but I’m not making any promises.”

I got us an appointment for the afternoon and we met with the late owner’s son and daughter. They showed us the office, the kitchen where breakfast was prepared and the laundry, and unlocked the doors to each of the twenty rooms.

“No obvious water damage or rotting wood,” Micah noted, though we’d have to hire a building inspector.

“The rooms are in good condition,” Archer said as he poked his head into a bathroom. “But you’re right, Daire, the whole place needs bringing into the twenty-first century.”

Micah wasn’t convinced on the idea of a reality TV show. He wanted to buy the motel for a fair price, do it up and sell for a profit, but Archer was into them. He used to watch them late at night when he was feeding newborn Elune. So we agreed to buy it after the building inspector had checked it out and we’d done a cost estimate.

It was my job to find someone willing to buy the idea from us. We had no experience in anything TV related but if the sale went through we’d have a building and a proposal.

We bought the motel no problem but after two weeks, I’d exhausted my list of contacts and was reduced to cold calling producers. Ninety percent of the time I didn’t get past the receptionist.

My big idea was a bust. Except I wasn’t willing to give up just yet. There had to be a way to make it happen.

84

DO PIRATES GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT?

Martin

When the guys asked if we could come spend the night at their new motel, I thought they were joking. Why would people want to stay at a motel in the same town they lived in? But Toby heard and got all excited and I agreed, still iffy on whether the offer was legit or not.

Turned out that it was and come Saturday afternoon Toby and I were packing up the car with our overnight bags, a grocery bag filled with snacks, his swords because apparently those were good luck now that we got the new apartment, and my laptop in case this whole thing was a bust and we ended up watching movies from the dated rooms.

I had to admit that when they told me they bought a “dated” motel I had images of it being dilapidated and in ruins. But as I pulled in, I could see it was not the case. At first glance it was like stepping back in time. I always loved mid-century modern and the building was from around the tail end of that era, or at least designed to look that way.

“Dad, this place is old. Like ancestors old,” Toby said from the seat behind me.

“Your grandparents were alive when this was built, it isn’t that old.” I found a parking spot easily, the No Vacancy sign blinking brightly. There wouldn’t be any for a while. They planned to pitch some kind of tv show now that they were the official proprietors.

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