I recently read a book by former FBI Special Agent Jerri Williams. In it, she talks about mob guys watching mob movies, and their reactions to them. In a transcript of a blog she did with John Ligato, he quotes mobsters as saying with regard to such movies: "That would never happen. We don't talk like that. That's stupid."

As a slight aside before moving on, I find myself often saying the same thing with regard to crime shows I've watched. Criminal Minds, for instance. I found myself laughing about a lot of what I saw on that show, which I never watched until after I'd written my 20th installation of The Unit. I've always wanted to keep my characters as real as possible, and toward that end have read many books like Jerri's that tell it like it is from the perspective of those that experience life in law enforcement. Jerri's rating of Criminal Minds was very similar to mine, with her giving it a rating of "Has anyone seen my shoe?" And if you really want to know what that rating means, I strongly recommend reading her book. It's called FBI Myths and Misconceptions: A Manual for Armchair Detectives.

Because my books focus heavily on the human side of being part of an elite law enforcement team, I often find myself having to do a bit of research on how people speak in different areas of the country, and how I can pen those dialects so that my readers hear my characters speak. I suppose that on occasion it might sound a little stereotypical, or even racist. But is it racism to put dialogue down in a way that someone would actually sound?

I mulled this over quite a bit when writing my prequel, Before the Unit: The Recruiting of Kevin Banks that gives the backstory of one of my two main characters, "Spud." In the book, he is recalling his days in the Secret Service before he joined the unit and while protecting a president he admired. He didn't admire all of them—but then, many agents in the Presidential Protective Detail don't admire the holder of the office they might be protecting at the time. (Would you expect otherwise?)

He admired the last one, though, for his candor and outright doggedness in pursuing things he saw as important to the nation. One of those things involved a trip that had Agent Banks on edge, as it involved going to what has been labelled as the worst place in America: a particularly crime-ridden and derelict area of Detroit, Michigan.

During that trip, the president encounters a Black man sitting on his porch. HIs home is in need of repair, but at least it's better off than the boarded up homes around it that are literally crumbling to the ground. Believe me, these neighborhoods exist!

The president has gotten out of the presidential limousine ("the Beast" as the agents call it) and is walking down this street, with Kevin and his fellow agents on high alert and just wishing the president would get back in the Beast and get the heck out of there, when he spies the man and walks up to him. Of course, Kevin is thinking, he could have a knife, or a gun, or just grab one of those loose boards…. Instead, the president and the man begin a dialogue that begins with the president asking the man what he thinks would make his neighborhood better. I wrote as I've heard inner city Blacks speak, and wondered if someone would think I was racist for doing so. However, it occurred to me that I was having this angst after writing the man's reply, which was, "I don't know what'd make this place bettuh, Mista President, but I know what would make ma place bettuh. I could use a job. You got a job fo me, Mistah President?" He didn't ask for a handout or to be moved to a project—he asked for a job.

You see, I still believe that people want to be self-sufficient, no matter what their status is in life.

One of the earliest characters, introduced in Book 1: Camp Chaos, is Luigi Cancio. Luigo is Italian, and still speaks with a bit of an Italian accent, having grown up in an Italian neighborhood in Connecticut. Having spent some time in that neighborhood, where the Catholic Church still conducts the Mass in Italian, I am familiar with the dialect. If the word ends in G, that G will likely not be pronounced. Thus, Luigi is "puttin' together" Hank's guns for her.

I currently live in El Paso, Texas which has a dialect totally different than the one you'll hear in Dallas. I always grin when some program I'm watching stages an episode here, as invariably they'll have characters speaking like folks do in the Hill Country. Maybe… if they originally grew up in the Hill Country.

So, if we ever meet, don't be surprised if I ask where you're from and to record your voice. It's all just the kind of research I do when attempting to find the best way to write the dialogue in my books.