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.

A Cop's Fears

Happy Halloween to one and all! On this spookiest of all days, there is much to fear. For example, my eldest daughter left this morning for sixth grade camp. I don't understand how she's old enough for this. Just yesterday, it seems, she was an infant wearing a tiny pumpkin costume, and now she's a half-grown preteen off to spend the holiday with her classmates. Who will fix her hair when she puts on her costume tonight? Who will suggest that she has already consumed enough candy for the evening and should possibly pace herself?

Cops have fears too, though they seldom admit to them. Bill and I are working on the second in our series of twelve police stories for Quake Publishing. This story discusses cops' fears and how they handle them. (Hint: by razzing each other mercilessly). Turns out Bill is afraid of heights, so the night he found himself suspended in the dark inside the construction skeleton of the Kellogg Company was not one of his finer moments.

My poor dog is afraid of just about everything, so Halloween isn't her favorite holiday - all those scary looking little kids ringing her doorbell and demanding candy. She looks awful cute in her little jockey costume, though!

A Contract in Hand

Today Bill and I have received a contract from Quake, a subsidiary of Echelon Press, to publish a series of short stories. Quake will publish twelve of our short stories as a series of six books, each appearing two months apart. These will be electronic books for the young adult reader.

In case you haven't met Bill, he is a seriously funny guy who served with the Battle Creek (MI) police force for 25 years. Or more. I'm not that great with numbers. Anyway, we've taken true tales of the bizarro things that have happened to him during his career and created these stories.

I'll give you an example of the type of experience he's had. Bill attended a prestigious high school in Detroit, then set off for college to become a teacher. Degree in hand, he found his first job as a substitute teacher in a Detroit high school. (Note: I am currently employed as a substitute high school teacher in Battle Creek.)

One fine afternoon, as Bill dragged his young charges through their math lesson, one of his students set a paper airplane on fire and sailed it toward the teacher. Being more athletic than academic, the young man hit his target with his plane and set poor Bill alight. Being modest, Bill said later that it was "only a little flame".

Apparently the flame was large enough to change his life forever. Bill gave up the hazards of substitute teaching and joined the police force because he wanted "safer" work while he raised a family. It proved to be a good move for him: in all his years on the force, no one ever shot him in the line of duty. Or set him on fire, for that matter.