Tony Gleeson's Blog: PERSONAL MISDEMEANORS with Tony Gleeson

Let’s return to my theme from my last entry, of “first introduction” books that began a lifetime romance with their work.

Once again, I’m going to refrain, for just a little while longer anyway, from shilling my own writing to concentrate on that of some of the people who have inspired and even taught me.

Had my first encounter with William Hjortsberg been an early book like, say, Toro Toro Toro or Gray Matters, most likely I would have decided he was a likeably quirky author and left it at that. Fortunately, I found Fallen Angel. I’m not sure whether I first read his book or saw the unfortunate 1987 film that was made from it, Angel Heart, but the book is what has stayed with me over the intervening years (I even made a point to re-read it– and review it for Goodreads– a few years ago). Fallen Angel is a striking mixture of styles that starts out like a classic Chandler or Ross MacDonald P.I. adventure and soon turns into a diabolical nightmare. Its gruesome twist perhaps isn’t totally unanticipated, but that made no difference to me in terms of impact. I knew I had found a writer with a unique sensibility. I kept his name in mind and some time later stumbled upon his 1994 book Nevermore. This could have been just another period-set mashup of historical figures– in this case Harry Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle and the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe– but Hjortsberg handled it with dark wit to spare (in my Goodreads review of this book I called him “a unique and quirky writer, a little raunchy with a fine and subtle sense of humor. Nobody writes quite like him.“). I was ready to seek out his earlier work, such as the two abovementioned titles, and now I found them quite enjoyable; I could see the potential in them for the wild rides that were to come.

My introduction to Michael Chabon (his very own explanation of how to pronounce his last name: “Shea as in Stadium, Bon as in Jovi”) was perhaps his best-known book, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. The opening chapters, which involve a wild attempt to rescue the mythical Golem from Nazi-occupied Prague, sold me instantly. The best known part of the story involves two immigrants to America who become celebrated comic book creators (shades of Siegel and Shuster and numerous others) but the plot goes in so many different and wondrous directions that it’s an impossible book to encapsulate and summarize. Suffice to say it made me a Chabon fan. My next encounter with the author was his Yiddish Policeman’s Union, and that pseudo noir-crime-novel became my favorite of a string of deep and delightful books, including The Final Solution and Telegraph Avenue. If any writer can make the reader believe he is both playing jokes on them and simultaneously initiating them into profound insights of worlds that could have been, he’s the one. Had I begun my acquaintance with Mr. Chabon at, say Wonder Boys or The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, I’m not sure I would have become that enthusiastic an acolyte.

And then there is one of the greats in the history of science fiction, Frederik Pohl. I had certainly experienced some of his short stories before I finally read his 1977 novel Gateway at the outset of the new millennium, but that was the book that cemented an impression upon my psyche. To this day it remains one of my all-time favorite works of science fiction, a moving story with deep humanity as well as a cosmic concept that was fertile enough to spawn a wonderful series of sequels known as the Heechee Saga (technically speaking it was not the true introduction to the Heechee narrative: that would be the 1972 satiric novella The Merchants of Venus). That was enough to make me a dedicated Pohl fan, and while I ultimately was disappointed in his latter-career Eschaton series (1996-99), there has almost never been anything else of his, novel, novella or short story, that has not lived up to the high expectations created by Gateway.

Stay tuned, because I have absolutely no idea where I'm going in the next installment of this blog!

First impressions can have a mighty impact. If your opening encounter with a person is really good, when you begin to learn their inevitable shortcomings, you just might be willing to overlook them. If you get off on the wrong foot, you might never recover. That first impression was that important.

Same with an author: that first encounter can be vital. Every writer has their up and down times, and if our first experience of them is with one of their less fortunate efforts, well… that might be as far as we ever get with them. On the other hand, if we luck out with one of their best, it can ignite a lifetime romance where we’re willing to overlook the literary warts that subsequently pop up. First impressions can be everything.

I was fortunate to have a strong opening experience with a number of writers that have stayed with me over the years; the individuals I’m going to name represent dozens upon dozens of books in my library to this very day.

Philip K. Dick is arguably one of the thorniest writers in science fiction: he could be charismatic and visionary or he could be just, well, obscurely weird. More than one of my friends got turned off to him early on and never returned. I had read his short story Faith of Our Fathers in Harlan Ellison’s anthology Dangerous Visions, but he hadn’t made an impact on me one way or the other before the turning point in 1980. I was at the outset of my career as an illustrator and had just landed a plum job: the art for five book jackets for the Science Fiction Book Club. They were all established classics and the publisher sent me all five books to read. The final one I tackled was PKD’s The Man in the High Castle. It grabbed me, shook me, and never let me go; I was enthralled with the wonderful story-telling and the ingenious concepts. (By the way the cover turned out fine). Not long thereafter I found Our Friends From Frolix-8 and a few other titles, and devoured them. I discovered Dick sometimes rewrote a book for various reasons or did variations, and on occasion could be acid-trippy to the point of incoherence, but by that point I was able to navigate the waters, on his terms, with joy. Today I’ve got most of his books, many in hard cover firsts, and have probably read 95% of his considerable oeuvre. Phil Dick still rates at the top of my list for brilliant concepts, innovative storytelling, and just basically doing everything in his own inimitable way...

I lucked out again with Donald Westlake: the first book of his that was recommended to me, while I was a bookseller in the early 2000s, was Dancing Aztecs. It’s the funniest book I’ve ever read. I’d still rate it as both my favorite Westlake and his best (two quite distinct categories). I followed that up with a couple more of his comic caper books, entries in his Dortmunder series. It was a while before I discovered the dark and serious side of Westlake: the very unsettling The Ax and of course his Parker series, written as Richard Stark. Despite being best known for his comic novels (which are very comic indeed), Westlake was an amazingly prolific author who spread himself over a gamut and masterfully handled a variety of genres (among my many favorites are his adventure novels, Kahawa and High Adventure). He could always keep you interested; those old clichés about “page-turner” and ”couldn’t put it down” definitely apply to him.

I’ve written in this blog about Evan Hunter and his magnum-opus 87th Precinct series (as Ed McBain). My introduction to his work also came as a bookseller in the early new millennium: the procedural mystery Jigsaw. It turned out to be a great place to jump in, despite being a most atypical 87th Precinct novel in several ways. To begin with, it’s the only series entry I can think of that stars detective Arthur Brown, who is a sardonic but likeable character. For another, it employs extensive playful graphics (the plot involves a criminal who leaves actual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle for the detectives). There’s a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek humor underlying the story (some of it sweetly risqué) and it’s one of the most entertaining in a series would prove constantly intriguing and entertaining. I followed up that introduction with a book much closer to the beginning of the series, Lady, Lady, I Did It, and one closer to the end, Heat. Both of those, by chance, feature the especially tragic arc of the love life of main character Bert Kling and are both powerfully touching. Those made me a dedicated fan: I ultimately went back to read the rest of the 55-book series more or less in order. I guess Jigsaw was the bait and the hook.

Kate Atkinson is a marvelous writer with several novels under her belt before she undertook the first book about the star-crossed British detective Jackson Brodie, Case Histories. I was totally unfamiliar with her before reading an intriguing review of the book by no less a light than Stephen King, in his regular column in Entertainment Weekly. It piqued my interest sufficiently to seek out the book, and her plot twists, literate wit and eloquence did not disappoint. In fact I eagerly awaited the three followups in the saga of the poor Mr. Brodie and have become a dedicated follower of her non-mystery literature as well. I note that almost no bookseller racks Ms. Atkinson in the mystery section, despite the success of her several crime novels. She’s earned her place in the mainstream literature section.

Join me next time when I bring on a few more literary first impressions that changed the course of my own reading history. And now I have to wonder if my relationship to certain other authors might have been different had the first-read been something other than what it was…

To be continued.

“Where do ideas come from?”

It’s more important where they go. The journey is sometimes circuitous… and mysterious.

The fifth entry in the Personal Crimes series began with a bare-bones concept: a well-to-do woman deep in depression lashes out at those around her and becomes the victim of a particularly savage murder.

I had a pretty clear idea of how this was going to play out: what happened and why, and the parties responsible. The investigators who would take on the case would be Detectives Jilly Garvey and Dan Lee. What I’d learned from experience was that the more earnest attitudes of those two (as opposed to their more equable colleague, Frank Vandegraf) would influence the tone of the story. So the logic of the book seemed set. How everything would play out as the actual writing proceeded seemed clear.

That’s when everything surprised me and went off on its own course.

The first hitch occurred as I took my detectives through their early investigation and introduced the supporting cast of suspects and persons of interest. I knew where I wanted them to go, but nothing logically was leading them there. Still, there was kind of a nice appeal to how Jilly and Dan grew increasingly frustrated as they spun their wheels. It gave them a human quality, a departure from the confidence, determination and facility they had displayed in previous appearances.

The problem was that I was frustratedly spinning my own wheels as well.

A story organically evolves as it’s actually formulated and written. This one was not elucidating very easily at all. I decided that a key piece of evidence had to emerge, but of course in a believable way and not as a gift from heaven dropped out of the blue. I labored to come up with a surprise that would open a vital avenue but wouldn’t feel forced. I tried to rely on my own problem-solving experience, when at times a piece of the puzzle turned up in an unexpected place; what had sometimes made it work was that, at the right moment, I was receptive to seeing it (how many times did my science teachers quote Louis Pasteur to me: “Chance favors the prepared mind”).

That’s what happened with Jilly and Dan. I felt as if I was right alongside them as they wrung their hands in exasperation and kept on plodding. We all put in our time together to illuminate the issue until the lucky break occurred. It was a most educational experience for me to accompany them, almost as much in the dark as they.

The next surprise was that Dan and Jilly decided to show a slightly different side of themselves to me as well. By the fifth book, I had made up my mind that the stories would try to do certain things and to NOT do others. I happen to have personally known a few members of the Los Angeles Police Department, including a few detectives. Generally I was more familiar with their extracurricular selves. Obviously they had jobs that dealt with danger and the murky side of life, but to me they were also people doing their jobs, the same as anyone else. It became important to me to show this side of my detectives. It didn’t feel natural to me to write too cynical or gritty. Perhaps I took some inspiration from the Scandinavian Noir writers I enjoy (and more about them in a later installment), where the crimes can be hellaciously gruesome but the investigators are workmanlike. The Personal Crimes stories, while still presenting some nasty crimes, would be more procedurals or whodunits than excursions into the dark night of the soul. There’s already plenty of the latter available; why lose personal authenticity in the quest for trendy "authenticity?"

While I hadn’t the space to delve too deeply into the personal lives of Jilly or Dan (that old devil word count), they clearly started bringing their own lives in to their routine. Both of them displayed human foibles in this book that momentarily threatened to jeopardize the apprehension of their suspect. In one case at least, it added a note of levity. And in the end, I think it made the book stronger. They had kept their faith through a chain of characters that definitely were not showing the best side of humanity, and in the end they had to keep their faith through their own shortcomings.

From this point on, the Personal Crimes members would become something more of a living, breathing group. Hereafter, there would be a regular influx of new characters– and a continuing development of the older ones– that continue to the present works in progress.

Another aspect of the book that emerged was my attempt to deal with the concept of depression. It’s a horribly mystifying thing for those who experience it and also for those who care about someone experiencing it. I don’t know how well I handled that issue– leave that to the reader to decide– but it was very real and tangible to me as I had various characters explore and try to cope with it. This was the point when I began to seriously consider underlying issues as part of the stories. None of this started that way; it just happened in development.

Jessica’s Death was released in the U.K. as part of the Linford Mystery Series in April 2017. For me, it’s still the engima in the series: the story that turned out to be much more elusive than I had originally envisioned, but also turned out to be much better than I had begun to fear. And in retrospect, it’s the point, perhaps, at which the Personal Crimes series began to try to deepen ever so slightly.

Evan Hunter (born Salvatore Lombino) was an amazingly prolific writer who also produced books under several pseudonyms, the best known of which was Ed McBain. McBain’s 87th Precinct series, credited by many with developing and popularizing the “procedural,” ran to 55 entries from 1956’s debut, Cop Hater, to 2005’s finale, Fiddlers. To some extent they’ve fallen out of fashion in recent years, which is a shame, because they provide a major classroom in how to create and sustain a cast of characters and setting, continuously keeping it interesting and surprising. I’ve read every one of them and could talk (or write) for hours on the lessons they’ve imparted to me (not to mention the entertainment they’ve given me over the years). Better minds than mine have waxed eloquent on the subject of the 87th Precinct series and its remarkable characters (and are worth seeking out); I’m just going to touch on a couple of important lessons I gleaned from the writings of Ed McBain and how I tried to apply them to my own series as it progressed.

I’m not sure that Evan Hunter started out to create a series for the ages. Reportedly, the original manuscript of the very first book ended with the death of Steve Carella, a character that arguably turned out to be the heart and soul of the 87th Precinct. But that was revised, and the rest, as they say, is history. Hunter was a marvelous story-teller and, in short order, created a rich world for his stories that involved the reader even as it evolved and grew through each book.

The city in which the 87th Precinct exists is never named, but it’s been well established that it’s New York City, only geographically rotated ninety degrees so that north is now east and so forth (the conceit was carried through to Long Island as well). New Yorkers would recognize the streets, boroughs, neighborhoods, and other geographic features, all craftily renamed, often with an underlying wit to those in the know. Maintaining the nameless feature through all those books could present a bigger challenge than one might think; Hunter handled it impressively, never awkwardly, in his wordplay.

The 87th Precinct cast quickly expanded to include several detectives, some of whom would alternately turn up as the principal figure of a book. It was an insightful way to retain the reader’s interest and loyalty as the series progressed. On the one hand, whenever you returned, you saw the familiar gang, but on the other, you’d get to follow, and become more familiar with, a different personality. Clearly Hunter’s favorite remained Steve Carella but a constant reader would also get to know the quirks of a growing cast of protagonists: Meyer Meyer, Arthur Brown, Cotton Hawes, Bert Kling, et. al. Each one possessed an individual personality, with their own pluses and minuses.

Hunter often shook up his plot approach in surprising ways. He’d depart from the procedural aspect by sending a character out of the city on a private journey, for example, or otherwise have them fall into an unexpected adventure out of the precinct environment. Now and then he’d begin a book with an incident and follow its aftermath into unforeseen territory. There were stories with a tinge of the supernatural or a comedic or romantic lean. A growing cast of supporting characters would become involved in subplots or side stories, that often grew out of the histories or personas of the individuals themselves. By the time the series’ last dozen or so entries were being created, it had turned into something of an organic creature: independent stories unfolding within a greater ongoing tale, with characters that had taken on a full life of their own.

There are probably dozens more aspects I could go into about the world of the 87th; the most important thing I can add at this point is that I can unequivocally recommend the series, and the writings of Ed McBain/ Evan Hunter in general. He was one of the finest story tellers of the latter twentieth century and I still think it’s regrettable that he’s somewhat fallen out of favor. Check him out for yourself.

But, getting “personal” (pun unfortunately intended), the things I’ve mentioned here were of particular education to me when I began to contemplate how I wanted my own Personal Crimes series to develop. As I’ve touched upon previously in this blog, it wasn’t until the third book, A Question of Guilt, that I began to fully consider the world in which it would evolve. I had already decided to alternate my focus between Frank Vandegraf and the team of Jilly Garvey and Dan Lee, and planned to bring other cast members to the fore in future stories. From this point on, there would be new faces appearing regularly, and their stories would evolve along with those of my originals. The city in which they operated, I had already decided, was best left unnamed (although I had nowhere near the cunning of an Evan Hunter in building an exact parallel to the city which I had in mind).

Finally came the idea of changing the scene, and that was what I did with the fourth book in the Personal Crimes series, The Other Frank. I had come up with the germ of a plot idea and decided to send the stoically dauntless Frank Vandegraf far away to a small Midwestern town for the funeral of his ex-wife, where he would deal with certain mischief I'd cooked up. He would be out of his jurisdiction, with no official capacity, and not well accepted by the local constabulary. On top of that he’d be entirely out of his comfort zone socially and psychologically, not something Frank dealt well with. Instead of being the authorized investigator in a procedural, he’d be a sort of amateur sleuth poking his nose in unwelcome places, often against his own better judgment. His cast of supporting characters began to fall into place, among them a jovial priest who might know more than he lets on, an unsympathetic sheriff, and a sly local trooper, Lee Maravich, whom I decided I liked a lot. He may yet turn up as the star of his own well-deserved book one of these days.

The Other Frank has remained perhaps my favorite book in the whole series. As happened in It’s Her Fault, Frank’s own wry sense of humor in the face of adversity imparted a certain lightness to the proceedings, despite some rather nasty murders. The tale began to take on a life of its own in a series of turns that surprised even me. It was published as part of the Linford Mystery Series in the U.K. in January 2017.

The first two Frank Vandegraf tales, It’s Her Fault and The Other Frank, were collected this year in the U.S. release by Wildside Press.

“Where do your ideas come from?” is a question every writer gets all the time. I’m going to be heretical here and say that an idea isn’t really of prime importance. Everybody gets ideas. From all sorts of places. An idea is kind of like packing your car before you take a trip; it’s a necessary step, but you’re not going anywhere until you get in the car and start the actual excursion. And usually the trip takes unexpected routes with unforeseen destinations.

Like every other writer I know, I’ve always got a bunch of ideas in different stages of development (this might be a good subject to come back to in more detail at a later time). This comes in handy when opportunity suddenly knocks, raps or rings, as it did when the Linford Mystery folks asked me for a follow-up to Night Music. My wife Annie and I had been tossing around a plot idea about a guy who’s found murdered with a note pinned to him that reads simply IT’S HER FAULT. His wife, the primary suspect, is then found dead with a similar note reading IT’S HIS FAULT. That seemed like a likely launching pad for the second book. At the same time, I had been developing a story about a young woman who, trying to pick up her life after a devastating break-up, is sorting through old photos and finds a year old picture that might exonerate a doctor who has just been convicted of killing his wife. In the original scenario, she takes it upon herself to do the necessary detective work to clear him (with resulting complications). That suddenly also seemed like a pretty good germ for the new book.

My first thought was to combine the two plots since I had introduced three detectives in Night Music and could spread the case around. But given the constraints of word count, I quickly concluded that was a bad idea. It would make much more sense to develop each one as an individual tale… and that would mean I could finally offer them TWO new books instead of just one!

And so was born the paradigm, if you will, for what would become the Personal Crimes series.

It’s Her Fault became the second entry in the series and concentrated on detective Frank Vandegraf. He was already an inveterate investigator possessed of a stoic mindset to deal with both the traumas and absurdities of his job. He blossomed as a character in this book: a man who’s learned that a strong sense of humor, and the ability to apply a large grain of salt, can get you through a lot. The story itself, and the supporting cast, assumed a lighter tone because of Frank’s lead. The supporting cast began to suggest and assert itself and I gained my first important insights into the Personal Crimes Unit. Frank’s immediate superior, Lieutenant Hank Castillo, and his underachieving colleague Detective Marlon Morrison fleshed out as important faces, and other details began to emerge in the setting. I became casting director, set designer, and location manager.

At heart, It’s Her Fault is a dark, tragic story, but somehow Frank found comedic elements in it and by extension, so did I– and, I hope, so did the reader. The story and the players made me happy through the entire writing and extensive editing process. One of the characters who emerged, small town police chief Wilma Acosta, appealed sufficiently to me that I later brought her back to star in a stand-alone entry, The Pieman’s Last Song. To this day, It’s Her Fault remains one of my favorites (as much as a parent can have favorite children).

The second book was released in the U.K. in the Linford Mystery series in May 2016. I had already started work on what would be the third book in the series, A Question of Guilt, and already the surprises had begun for me. It made sense to focus on different characters from the original Night Music so I decided that partners Jilly Garvey and Dan Lee would handle this one. They are both considerably more earnest in their approach to their cases than Frank and as a result, the third book took on a somewhat more serious tone as well. The story began with a long flashback to events one year earlier, and since Dan was a brand new addition to the unit, that meant introducing Jilly’s former partner, Reggie Martinez, and touching upon their relationship a bit. It also allowed me to introduce more of Dan’s backstory as a patrol officer before he got his detective badge. The point of view of necessity shifted from my original concept of a young woman finding herself over her head to that of the detectives enmeshed in a case, and that created what I thought was an interesting tension: experienced Jilly is positive she got the right killer and sees the naïve Kerry, who is convinced otherwise, as nothing but a nuisance. This was the book where the concept of the Personal Crimes Unit coalesced. From this point on, I would have a more confident vision of its role in the city and the kind of personnel that populated it. I began deeper research into just how such a unit operated. The cast of regulars hereafter would continuously debut, interact, grow and evolve. More immediately, I found myself following Jilly and Dan through a hodgepodge of peripheral characters and happenings: as I would later describe them in a blurb, ”a maze of jet-set socialites, urban hipsters, shady investigators and low-life criminals… and still another murder…”

A Question of Guilt was published by Linford in July 2016. I’d say this was where the Personal Crimes crew finally found their identity. But there was more to be revealed to me by my characters, and a lot more adventure to be had. I hope you'll join me as the tale unfolds.

A postscript: Sometime later, someone reviewing the manuscript commented, “I think a much better title for this would be Open and Shut. Your detectives even use the expression to describe how convinced they are of the guy’s guilt.” I had to agree, and in a rare case of being able to take advantage of hindsight, I changed the title of the book to that when it was released, in an omnibus edition with Night Music, in the U.S. by Wildside Press last year.

Welcome to the first installment of my Goodreads blog. I thought I’d talk a little bit about my ongoing Personal Crimes series and how it came about. Linford Mysteries has just announced it will release the eighth installment, The Last Step, in the U.K. this November. Two collections of the earlier books have been released in the U.S. by Wildside Press, with a third planned. Happily, the Personal Crimes series seems to have taken on a life of its own, but it didn’t start out that way…

The creation of the detectives of the Personal Crimes unit began in 2009 as a kind of dabble, just a germ idea of eight apparently unconnected murders occurring all in one night, dumped into the laps of a few overworked urban detectives. For some reason the joke word “achtmusic” popped into my head. Then, as Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik ran through my head incessantly, I set about trying to construct a convoluted (but logical) timeline over some unspecified city’s geography as to how those eight killings could all be related. I’ve still got the crude map that I created and annotated that evening. There was no thought that this would be much more than a creative exercise, a mental workout that might or might not lead to an actual book… or at least a novella.

The detectives came next, stress the plural. Eight murders would be too much for one investigator. The first guy on the scene, Frank Vandegraf, would be a veteran: a little tired, a little cynical. To balance him out, I added the team of Jilly Garvey— experienced, focused, serious, compassionate— and her new partner Dan Lee— sharp and intelligent but young and tentative. Beyond that, they were little more than character sketches. Their parallel investigations would gradually expand and coalesce into a bigger picture of what really happened that night.

At this point there was no Personal Crimes Unit as such and no intention of extending these characters into a larger setting or developing new facets of their personalities. I had a vague idea of the city in which they worked, but didn’t want to pin it down. In this regard, I took inspiration from Ed McBain’s marvelous 87th Precinct series, which is set in a nameless city that is a topsy-turvy recreation of New York. The city of my detectives would, over time, turn out to be a fast-and-loose version of a real city in which I’ve spent some time, but which would never be specifically named. And no, I’m not going to tell you what the inspiration city is: you’re welcome to read the books and take a guess.

I quickly came to the realization that Achtmusic was not a great title for the story but I still liked the neologism and didn’t want to give it up just yet. Jilly became a classical music fan who had made Eine Kleine Nachtmusik into a ringtone on her phone as a mordant commentary about the “night music” that filled her job: the sirens and radios, the cacophony of victims, police and medical responders, and so forth. That opened new dimensions to the protagonists in many ways. Frank and Dan would kid Jilly (and she could give it right back to them) about her patrician tastes in music. Frank would make the “achtmusic” joke once they had all eight murders laid out, revealing himself to be culturally deeper than he often let on. And I had a far better title (and underlying theme) for the story.

Night Music had begun to come together but it was still a bare-bones account that needed further flesh and direction. I still wasn’t sure of how long it would be when completed, or if it would even be completed at all. I only knew the ultimate solution; how my detectives would solve it was still… tentative.

That’s when a stroke of good fortune occurred and a representative for a publisher in Britain expressed interest in my work (important lesson here: keep putting everything out there). It gave me the incentive to jump on the story, finish it and polish it. It also provided me the formal framework I needed in terms of word count and style: I was given a maximum wordage and some boundaries on language and situations. Those constraints turned out to be a Godsend (second important lesson: limitations create opportunities). The unwitting stereotypes and clichés I might have been stepping into had to be addressed. Whereas my original concept of Frank was a cranky and profane curmudgeon, I now found a more reserved and stoic mindset fit him quite well. He was no shrinking violet but had no need at this stage of his life to prove his own toughness. He became, in short, an individual, as would Jilly and Dan. My prose had to tighten; I found more succinct ways to bring out vital settings and character traits, and jettisoned descriptions that really didn’t add to the read. The temptation to go fashionably (and perhaps unconvincingly) dark and murky gave way to the desire to just be an involving storyteller.

Another stroke of luck accompanied this as I made the acquaintance of a valued friend and counselor who generously provided me the guidance and direction I needed to make all this work. (A third important lesson: be open to, and listen to, people who know more than you do!)

In the process, as tends to happen, Frank, Jilly and Dan began to take on their own lives, to act and speak “on their own.” Writing them became easier, in some ways, because they just naturally began to act like Frank, Jilly and Dan. Night Music wound up telling its own story to me. I just tried to keep up with everything.



Night Music was published as part of the Linford Mystery Series in November 2015. And they asked if I might be interested in submitting anything further.
As luck would have it, I had a few plot ideas in different stages of development. As of that point I hadn’t considered they would work as new situations for Frank, Jilly or Dan. The concept of the unit where they worked was still amorphous; the Personal Crimes Unit, and the police department in which it existed, were about to undergo construction.

The second and third books in the series, It’s Her Fault and A Question of Guilt, would be developed somewhat in parallel. But those are tales for another day. I hope you’ll follow along with me next time again.