Future Officers on the Case

I helped Bill this past week with his Criminal Investigation class. He teaches at the local police academy, and every semester he has to create a mock crime scene for the students to process. He lays out a dead body, with ID and drugs in its pockets.

The students have to capture a footprint, fingerprint, tool mark, and gather the evidence. They have to write a report on the call. They have to measure the location of each piece of evidence and sketch the scene. It's a lot of work for the students, but setting up the thing is quite a bit of work for Bill, too. He's always relieved when it's over.

My First Review!

I gotta tell you, the past two weeks have been rather exciting. In addition to signing the contract with Quake for those 12 police stories with Bill, I have also had a short story of my own published by Untreedreads.

"Cereal Killer" is available at electronic stores near you, or you can buy it straight from the publisher here. It's a humorous romantic mystery. "Elizabeth Hart enjoys her high-powered job and her lakeside home but is tired of Officer Andrew Baird's hands-off policy. A mere ten year age gap is no reason for refusing romance, is it? As Andrew searches for the motive behind a young woman's death, Elizabeth carefully plots her revenge against the handsome man who treats her as a younger sister. By using Andrew's penchant for practical jokes against him, she learns how to pursue truth, justice, and the handsome cop next door."

There's already a review of the story online, and it wasn't even written by my mother. In fact, I've never met the lady (author Gail Farrelly) who wrote it, though we do hang out on the Short Mystery Fiction Society yahoo group together. I'm going to quote her review here, because she said I could and because it's my first ever:

"I didn't want it to end! I really enjoyed this story. Although it's a complete story, it left me wanting more. Much more. The two main characters are warm, funny intriguing people. I'd love to meet them again (in other short stories and/or books) as their relationship develops."

Pretty cool, huh? And again, she's not even my kin. The internet is truly amazing.