Where Do My Characters Come From, The Final Chapter

As I hope you know, I've spent the last three weeks answering the number one question I get asked at author and book events, which is, "Where do your characters come from?" I talked about Harry, Dee, and Jenn, and I want to wrap up this week talking about a few characters who are inspired directly by folks I know. 

The real-life Keith, Jennifer, Jonathan
and Maria, aka Pepper.

The first pair I want to talk about is the pastor of Harry and Dee's church and his wife. Their names are Jonathan and Pepper and they are based on two of my best friends, Jonathan and Maria Delgado. Jonathan is the Family Life Minister at my church and Maria, his wife, is known, mostly by me, as Pepper. I've talked about her before. She has become my unpaid personal assistant and designated beta reader just because she wants to be. And they are both my great friends. In the storyline, Jonathan performs the memorial service for Emma Grace and Pepper becomes Jenn's confidante after she is rescued from the clutches of her crazy father. They are pretty much exact replicas of my Jonathan and Pepper in that they are some of the kindest, most loving people I know. And, in a fun twist, the fictional Pepper knows an author named Joe Stephens. 

With my Dr. Mathur at a
Baltimore Orioles game.

The next character that is based on a real life person is Dr. Jennifer Schoenhut, who was Dee's therapist as she learned to cope with the loss of Emma Grace and then Harry's as he tries to overcome the guilt of maiming Jenn's biological father. Dr. Schoenhut, known affectionately to Harry as Doc, is based on the female half of my other best couple friends, Keith and Jennifer Schoenhut. Keith hasn't appeared directly in any of the books (yet), and the real-life Jennifer is not a therapist, but the fictional one is just like her in pretty much every other way. She's beautiful just like the real one. They have a baby named Samuel (my godson) and she is such a good listener who loves people enough to tell them the truth that they need to hear even when it is not necessarily what they want to hear. She helps Harry to become accountable for what he has done and to find his way to grace and forgiveness. It's that kind of compassion and love that I see from my Jennifer all the time. 

Finally, a character who is definitely based on a real-life person is Dr. Priya Mathur. Her from-the-real-world counterpart is Dr. Poonam Mathur. While my Dr. Mathur is not an OB/GYN (she studies infectious diseases), her caring manner and brilliance are definitely just like the fictional one. And she's so humble that she will disagree with everything I just said. But don't believe her. I may be prejudiced because I love her like a daughter, but I'm also right. 

So that winds up this portion of my series on reader questions. Next week: Where do I get my story ideas? 

Where Do My Characters Come From?

An author event in Charleston where
I, no lie, answered this exact question.

As you may recall, last week I started a short series in which I respond to common questions I get at author events. Last Saturday, I discussed where I get book ideas. This week, I begin responding to the folks who want to know where my characters come from. So here goes. There's no short answer to that, so I'm going to concentrate for a while on one character at a time, starting with this question:

"Is Harry Shalan you?"

Seriously, you should
see my classroom. It's
like a museum.

I get that all the time. The short answer is no. The long answer is a little more complicated. It's really hard to deny that he and I are strongly connected. I'm an English teacher and he's a former English teacher. He only taught for one year, though, and I'm in my twentieth year at my school. I was a seminarian and he was too. But I quit to take a job at a church while he quit to become a gumshoe. I like trains and superheroes and he likes trains and superheroes. And my friends who read my books say that Harry sounds like me in their heads, but that is pretty much where the resemblance ends. He's a tough guy and I am decidedly not. He has shot people and put away lots of criminals. I have shot paper targets and put away lots of pizza. He is athletic and muscular, his body only marred by the occasional bullet wound. I give dad bod a bad name and my body is only marred by my gall bladder surgery scars. He's happily married to a gorgeous, sexy redhead. I am decidedly less successful in the romance department. Ladies, I am, as hard as it is to believe based on my description of myself, available.

Probably my proudest moment as a teacher,
the year I received the Milken National
Educator Award. The young lady with
me is one of many inspirations for
Harry's adopted daughter Jenn. Her name
is Marissa and she and her husband
are expecting a baby soon!

Because we have the same voice and I know we have the same speech patterns, I guess you could say that Harry is, to borrow a DC Comics concept, me from a different Earth in the multiverse. Actually, if you want to know where I got the idea for creating a character in this way, the answer is my writing hero Robert B. Parker, who stole the idea from his writing hero Raymond Chandler, creator of the iconic Philip Marlowe. He was open about the fact that he based his main hero, Spenser, on himself. He created a character who sounded and thought about the world just like he did, but that was where the resemblance ended. I loved Spenser from the moment I started reading that first book back in the 1980s, but his worldview is a lot darker than mine, so it makes sense that in stealing Parker's idea, it would be by creating a character who wasn't as sullied by the world as Spenser is. Like Spenser, Harry sees himself as an Arthurian knight born out of time and believes he's in the world to help the weak and defend the downtrodden. And he has a code that guides his life. But Harry's code and Spenser's code are different in a lot of ways. One of the big differences between Harry and Spenser is in religious beliefs. Harry, like me, is a man of faith, while Spenser is agnostic. That gives a completely different tone to my work from that of Parker. For one, you'll find not a single curse word in any of my books. There are, hopefully not too graphic, sex scenes in my books, but they are always between Harry and Dee and that's on purpose. I think it's important for the world to understand that Christians aren't anti-sex. And while Harry never judges, always helping and encouraging, he and Dee are quite open about their beliefs, especially with their daughter Jenn.

I could go on and on talking about the one fictional character I probably know better than Spenser, but I think that will suffice. To sum up, the answer to the question with which I started this post is yes and no. Harry is me, but he's most decidedly also not me. Does that clear it up?

Next week: Dee Shalan

Where Do I Get My Story Ideas?

I like to answer questions about my writing. I much prefer that to the actual readings. I just realized that as I typed it, but it's true. I don't know if it's the interactivity of it or that I'm not confident that I do a good job of reading, but I do know that I like to talk about the process I go through in my writing. And that's true despite the fact that, no matter how many times I do events, I get the same few questions every time. Once in awhile, someone will surprise me, but mostly it's some combination of the same three or four questions. So I thought I would do a short series of posts in which I answer those queries. 

One thing that is almost always asked, especially at events that aren't with other authors, is where I get my story ideas. The first time I was asked that, I have to admit that I was taken aback to realize I didn't have any idea. And the reason for that is that when I first started writing Harsh Prey, my first book, it was more about the characters than the story itself. I had two people who loved each other deeply, but one of them wasn't sure if she could deal with the violent job of the other. It was almost like I had a snapshot and I built the whole story out from that still frame. It's not almost like that, actually. It's exactly like that. I had no idea where the story was going. At the beginning, I asked myself, what if she's been gone to decide if she can deal with his being a detective and she calls, only to have the violence of his job intervene? And that seemed to work, so I had to ask why the violence happened. The answer was what propelled the story. But regardless of what happened in the detective half of the books, they were, and always will be, more than half about that relationship between Harry and Dee, and now Jenn and Emma Grace too. The Shalan Adventures are, for good or bad, stories about a loving family and the things they go through together. It's almost incidental that he's a gumshoe. 

The second Shalan story, Kisses and Lies, was loosely inspired by an event in the life of the young lady upon whom I based the leggy blonde at the beginning of the book. She had gotten married--in fact, I had performed the wedding--and found that her new husband changed immediately afterward. It was nowhere near as violent as it was in my fictionalized version, but it was, as usual, this series of what-ifs. What if he had been hiding something darker? What if it got violent? What if there were a family dynamic that added a level of depth? And the story grew from there.

The next two, In the Shadow and Dawn of Grace, are really one giant story arc broken into two books. The arc actually begins at the end of Kisse and Lies when Harry finds out that Dee is pregnant. That story was always going to be primarily about them losing that baby and then getting it back. I made the story of Jenn to parallel that. The Jenn part was again inspired loosely by real life events, though no one incident in particular. I'm just exposed to and touched by stories of abuse against young people because of my job as a high school teacher. And when I started writing In the Shadow, I just chose a young lady who was my student and made her the face I saw when I imagined the story in my mind. This young lady wasn't just my student. She was one of my adopted kids, the gang who eat lunch in my room and stay after school to watch movies while I make pancakes and come see me after they graduate when they come home from college. So when I pictured someone doing terrible things to her, it helped me tap into the rage that drove Harry to do what he did at the end of the book. 

As for my current work in progress, it grew out of a scene from a classic book. I read it as part of the AP reading last summer. It was about a young lady taken in by someone purporting to be her father, but he turns out to be a very bad man. Over the course of the week of the reading, I started building a story on that concept that had nothing to do with the original book at all, but that evolved from that situation. What if a teenager had no family and suddenly someone came along saying he was her long-lost father and he wanted to take her in? So that made me ask the next question, which was how did she come to have no one? Was she always an orphan or did she have a family that she lost somehow? And what if, like in the original book, he wasn't really her father? Why would he be interested in taking her in? I knew he had to have some ulterior motive, but I really didn't want it to be anything sexual. I'd had enough of that dark realm and wanted his motivations to be evil in a completely different way. So the story built from there. 

So I guess the answer to the question of where I get my story ideas is that I start with a character or a group of characters and a beginning point--a snapshot in time--and I start asking what if. What if this happened? What if he or she reacted in that way? And once I've asked and answered enough of those what-ifs, I have a book. Piece of cake. Mmm, cake. I better wrap this up and have some breakfast. 

Next week: Where Do My Characters Come From?

Do Authors Have To Have Had a Miserable Life?

I've heard a lot of people say that in order for someone to be a good writer, he or she must have led a dark life full of sad experiences and alcoholism and just misery in general. When I first heard that, I thought I was doomed to failure because, as I only half-jokingly say, I grew up in a combination of a Norman Rockwell painting and a situation comedy. Sure, there were tough times, but life in general was happy. Or at least that's how I remember it--I've found over the years that there are less than positive events, like family fights, that, when I've been reminded of them, I realize I have absolutely no recollection of them. You may think that means I'm blocking out bad memories, and maybe I am, but I would argue it's more about having a terrible memory in general. I am occasionally reminded of happy events that I don't recall at all either. 

But I digress. Let's get back to the question of whether an author's life must be one of abject wretchedness in order to be successful. I should probably say that, depending on your definition of success, I may have no right to answer the question. I've made no best-seller lists, won no contests, or even succeeded in obtaining an agent or publisher. So if your definition is a traditional one, I've been an utter failure. And maybe that's made me a better writer. But that's not how I measure success. The fact that I've written four novels and a novella that people have enjoyed makes me successful. I have people who like my characters and my voice as a writer. I have a tribe. It's a small one, but it's real nonetheless. So I feel successful. And like I said, I haven't been abused and filled with mental anguish all my life. 

So why do people think that authors need to have lived like that? I guess probably a lot of it has to do with the fact that so many authors, like creative people in practically every field, have suffered from hard lives, substance abuse, and/or mental illness. But I think we only notice those folks for the same reason we notice the bad news on TV and the Internet before the good. We're drawn to the negative, the lurid, the spectacular, not really paying attention to the fact that for every wacked, out pill-popping, drunk author/actor/singer/artist, there are many quite successful ones that lead lives of quiet normality. 

But what of the argument that in order to write about sad things, one must have experienced those things? Well, the short answer is that that's just silly. Based on that thinking, no man could ever write in the voice of a woman, no white person could ever write in the voice of someone of any other race, and no one who has never been to another country could ever write about that place. And yet people successfully do this every day. How? Paying attention and being sensitive. 

Harry and Dee, the protagonists of my Shalan Adventures series, lost a baby. I've never experienced that, and yet people who have read my books say that I handled the emotional responses to that event accurately and with sensitivity. I've also never been sexually molested, physically or psychologically abused, been shot, or shot anyone. And yet my readers tell me that I've told stories about these events with believability. How? I know people who've gone through many of those things. I've listened to them talk of their experiences. I've hugged and cried with them as they've struggled with them. And their experiences have informed my writing. 

What of the things I've not experienced directly? As I've said before (like last week), good writers are first voracious readers. For every word I've written about the ins and outs of the life of a detective, I've read thousands. I've read books, articles, pamphlets, interviews, medical reports--you name it, I've read it for the sake of being able to write about it in a way that rings true. 

So successful writers don't have to write or drink themselves blind in order to get the voices in their heads to shut up for a while. They don't have to have been beaten or neglected or abandoned as children. They don't have to have been or done anything. But they do need to be aware and sensitive enough to internalize those experiences when they happen to the people around them and/or the characters they read about. So I guess the key to being a successful writer is compassion. Well, that and the ability to, you know, actually write. All the sensitivity in the world won't help if you just don't have a way with words. But the reverse is true too. Great wordsmiths who can't feel others' pain will write beautifully crafted, eloquent words that ring hollow to the reader. 

So maybe being good at writing is less about any one thing and more about lots of things coming together. Which makes writing a lot like life in general. The happiest, most fulfilled people are the ones who have the ability to enter into and come alongside the lives of the people around them and also have found a career that combines their passion and best abilities. 

You notice I didn't mention money in there. In my opinion, anyone who measures success based on their bank account is going to end up miserable. There's nothing wrong with making millions of dollars, but it should be a by-product of success, not the end product. 

Happy Birthday To Me!

For my birthday, I
became Batman.

It's my birthday, so I slept in today. When I woke up, my brain couldn't comprehend why it was so bright outside. I've gotten up before dawn seven days a week for well over a month. The last time I slept past daybreak was sometime in the summer. But I had a good excuse, aside from the whole birthday thing. Last night was my school's homecoming. As the assistant advisor to the Student Council, I had school all day, ran and grabbed some dinner, and then was at school again until about 11:15. It was a long but satisfying day. But I needed to get some sleep, so I turned off my alarm.

The other day my mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday. When I was younger, I always looked forward to being asked that because it meant the big day was coming. Then, when I got a little older, it was less of a happy thing and more of a reminder that I wasn't getting younger. Now, I'm in a good place in my life. I don't want to rush anything, but I'm at peace with the aging process. A lot of that has to do with my complete conviction that this life is only the beginning of a great adventure. Once this body dies, I'll get a new, perfect body and my soul will live on in the unending love of God. And so dying doesn't scare me like it used to. Which means I can celebrate birthdays all I want without an ounce of dread. I'm happy to say that I'm 53. I made it another year. I'm excited to see what the next one brings.

But the question still remains: what do I want for my birthday? Well, that's a toughie because it's hard to think of much that I could ask for that I don't already have. I have a big, close family who love me very much. I have a group of friends who are also my family. I have two great jobs, both of which I love; a comfortable, clean place to live; and a cool new ride. The one thing I never got to do was raise children, but I get my parenting instincts out on my students, some of whom have become just like my children. And there's a handsome young lad named Samuel Schoenhut who I love to the moon and back. I'm excited to help his parents guide him to adulthood in any way that I can.

So what does that leave? Frankly, not much. But if you put a gun to my head, I'd have to say--after I asked you to stop pointing the gun at me--that there are a few things I'd like to ask for this year. Here the are:

• A publishing contract for my new, not-finished-yet book. I've enjoyed the independent thing with The Shalan Adventures and I intend to continue that, but I'm still old-school enough to want to publish at least one book traditionally. It doesn't have to be a bestseller. I just want to be able to say I did that. 
• Speaking of the Shalan Adventures, I'd love to hear back from the production company who contacted me about the production rights on them. That would be a great present. 
• Last, but most important, my wish is that the world and all its inhabitants would learn to live in the love of Christ. 

So there's my list. Publishing companies and studios, how about we get on those first two? As for the last one, if you want to know more about my faith, all you have to do is ask. 

RRBC Back-To-School Book and Blog Party!

Welcome to my stop on the RRBC Back-to-School Book and Blog Party on My Train of Thought in Parkersburg, West Virginia!

Here's what I'm giving away today to one person who leaves me a comment:

• A complete signed set of my four Shalan Adventures, including Harsh Prey, Kisses and Lies, In the Shadow, and Dawn of Grace!

Hi! My name is Joe Stephens, and I'm the author of the Shalan Adventures, starring the dynamic pair of detectives, Harry and Dee Shalan, who are not only an amazing  couple of detectives but also an amazing couple. They are crazy about each other, even when life just doesn't seem to want them to be happy. So if you enjoy your detective thrillers with a solid dose of romance, then the Shalan Adventures are for you! Here's a little more about each book: 

Harsh Prey

​

Harry Shalan, a quick-witted if somewhat distractible private eye, makes the wrong mobster mad, putting his wife Deanna in the hands of kidnappers. Harry strikes a bargain and secures her release; however when she is finally back in Harry’s arms, Dee insists that she will no longer play the doting wife cheering him on the sidelines—he now has a partner.

HARSH PREY is a detective novel, but one that brings a different sensibility to the genre. Inspired by such great characters as Philip Marlowe, Spenser, and Sam Spade, Harry and Dee Shalan are, for lack of an existing term, soft-boiled detectives. Filled with humorous dialogue, unusual characters, and Harry’s deep, sometimes comically twisted observations, it explores the saving nature of love and the darkness that can come about when that love turns into obsession.

Kisses and Lies

​

In the second Shalan adventure, Harry and Dee are trying to come to the aid of a young woman named ALYSSA HILLMAN, who may or may not have just killed her abusive husband in self-defense. The problem is that no one can find the body. 

It quickly becomes apparent that Alyssa's husband, WILLY HILLMAN, is alive and leaving a trail of death and destruction in his wake as he spirals out of control. 

Will Dee and Harry catch up to the psychopathic murderer before he kills again?

IN THE SHADOW

Local high school student Jenn Bezaleel is missing and the police are at a loss. It’s like she vanished without a trace and no one knows anything. So they call in Harry Shalan, who, at the urging of his extremely pregnant wife, Dee, takes the case.
 
But when Harry starts looking into Jenn’s disappearance, he uncovers some dark family secrets, leading him to conclude that, assuming he can find her, the last place this girl needs to be is back with her mother and stepfather. 

Just as Harry begins to make progress on the case, however, tragedy strikes that threatens to tear Harry and Dee apart forever. Will they find Jenn Bezaleel? If so, where will she go? Can Harry and Dee survive their heartbreaking loss? The answers are…In The Shadow.

DAWN OF GRACE

Why is private eye Harry Shalan standing on the Fifth Street Bridge contemplating how much he would mind if he fell in the river and didn't come back up? You see, Harry lives by a strict code of honor and is struggling not to hate himself because he broke his code--badly. He lost control and brutally attacked his foster daughter Jenn's biological father, Antonio Bezaleel. Bezaleel is more monster than human and everyone agrees that he deserves a punishment much worse than the one Harry dealt out to him. Nonetheless, Harry's act has sent him into a spiral of despair that has cut him off from the very people he needs the most. His wife and detective partner Dee, his foster daughter Jenn, and his best friend Otis are fighting to bring their hero back from the brink.

In the midst of this dark episode, Harry and Dee answer a cry for help from an old friend who is accused of savagely murdering and mutilating her ex-husband. She swears that she didn't kill him, but things don't look good. She was, after all, found by the police kneeling over the man covered in his blood and gripping the knife that had been used to kill and dismember him. 

Their investigation brings them in contact with a precocious six-year-old who swears the murder was committed by a ninja, and he just may be the key to the case. They also encounter an old classmate of Harry's who is a little more appreciative of Dee's anatomy than anyone's comfortable with, a guy who likes to snort coke and cut women's hair, and even a hooker with a heart of gold. They also meet a quiet young woman named Anita Rathbone who seems quite sweet on Otis, a man married to his job since the only woman he's ever wanted is married to his best friend. Does Otis finally find a woman to love? Does Harry learn to forgive himself and accept the forgiveness of those who care for him? Do the Shalans solve the crime and save their friend from a life behind bars? The answers are revealed in
DAWN OF GRACE: A SHALAN ADVENTURE

Sound interesting? Just go here to find out how to read previews of each and to buy them in paperback or for Kindle! Or you can also visit my website!

The Difference Between a Writer And An Author

I've reflected a few times over the years on this blog about whether or not I'm a writer. In fact, it was one of the first posts I ever wrote, and I've re-examined the issue periodically. But now, looking back, I realize my focus may have been wrong. It could be that the proper question doesn't ask whether I'm a writer. Instead, I may need to ask myself whether I'm an author. I'm not a hundred percent sure they're the same thing.

I believe lots of people can call themselves writers. Bloggers, people who write poems or short stories or even novels are all writers. Literally the only thing that is required for you to call yourself a writer is that you do it relatively regularly, whether for publication or just because you want to.

But I think maybe an author is a little different from a writer. I think it has to do with a few ways in which the two diverge, such as how seriously you take your craft (or even if you see what you do as a craft), how much time you put into it, and what you do with your writing when it's finished.

Writers write. That's all it takes. But I believe to become an author, I must take it beyond the simple placing of words on a page (or screen). Authors craft their words so that they do and say exactly what they want them to do and say. They closely examine all aspects of their writing, from word choice to sentence structure to character development to story arc. They see what they are doing as both an art and a craft. Truly great writers have a way with words, a facility for creating memorable characters and stories, but a writer who isn't an author won't spend the time and effort to make those words, characters, and stories have the maximum impact on the reader.

Another way in which not all writers are authors has to do with how much of a time commitment one gives to writing that the other doesn't. I believe I was a writer when I wrote my first book. I'm pretty sure I wasn't an author. I wrote a book, but I certainly can't say I crafted it. And that's the difference. I proofread it after I wrote it. But I didn't put in the time and work to make it approach the level of art. I'm not saying it's terrible, but I'm definitely not saying it's good. Actually I am saying that ugly brown thing I first published really was terrible. It wasn't good in any way. The cover was ugly and it just wasn't ready for publication. The process I go through now when I write a book is much more thorough and contemplative than it was then.

The final way in which the two things are different in my view can be illustrated by something a friend told me. He's a bookstore owner who carries a small section of local writers. He told me that I'm one of only two local authors who actually sell any books. He said a lot of folks have this feeling that they'd like to write a book, so they do, and they even go so far as to self-publish it. But then they stop. They don't write more books and they don't publicize the one they did write. I'd say I spend at least as much time on the non-writing half of writing as I do on the actual writing. I maintain my online presence daily. I enter writing contests. I do readings and signings. I go to book events like the WV Book Festival. I travel and meet with bookstore owners trying to get my book into as many stores as possible. I think that, as much as the actual writing, makes me an author.

Let me finish by saying that I didn't write this to exclude anyone or make anyone feel like less. This is purely a personal reflection. It's a reminder to myself that if I want to call myself an author, I need to take my writing more seriously. More seriously than I used to when I first decided I wanted to write books and more seriously today than I did yesterday. Otherwise, I'm just a writer. And I want to be an author.

Shalan #4 Title Revealed!

Every senior teacher yesterday after grading finals and
projects all week. 

It's been a crazy last month of the school year, but somehow, amidst grading projects and reading portfolio entries and getting ready for all the end-of-the-year activities for my seniors (I'm one of the class sponsors), I've managed to get the fourth book in my Shalan Adventure series nearly ready to go. I'm down to one last draft, which is about a third complete, and a polish coat, so I plan to be finished within the week.

I can't show you the cover because that's not even close to ready, but today I'm going to share a couple of things with you. First, I'm going to tell you the title and talk about the process I went through in coming up with it. And second, I'll share the opening chapter.

THE TITLE: When I was almost through the first draft and knew how the book was going to end, I started thinking about what to call it. I thought for quite a while and was almost completely stumped. This book has been different in many ways from the first three and this was one of them. I knew the title practically from the first word of the others. This one was a struggle, though. If you follow my writing, you know this one has taken a lot longer to write than the first three. As long as Kisses and Lies and In The Shadow combined. And I just couldn't decide what to name it. I talked with my faithful sidekick, Pepper Potts, and we agreed on one thing:
it needed the word grace in it. Once you read the book, you'll see the double reason for that. But that was it. Grace didn't seem like a very good name for a detective book. I got out my writing notebook and started writing down every phrase that could possibly contain the word and still make sense. It went on for two, two-column pages. But none of them sounded right. And then I was listening to Josh Groban's Christmas album (it was Christmas so that isn't weird and I never listen to Christmas music at odd times of the year and just shut up about it), when I heard him use an unusual phrasing for one line in "Silent Night. The normal line is, "With the dawn of redeeming grace," which the background singers sang, but he just sang, "Dawn of grace." BOOM! There was my title. It fit the book exactly in about eleventy billion ways. I texted it to Pepper and she loved it as much as I did. That cinched it. So there you have it, folks, Shalan Adventure #4 is entitled:

Dawn of Grace

Like I said, I can't show you the cover because I don't have it yet. But I can show you the picture I gave to my super-duper professional photographer friend Liv. She's going to be at the beach in early June and will take the cover photo for me. It will be something like this, only a lot better:

The First Chapter: This book takes up about five minutes after In The Shadow ends. If you want the full story of just why Harry is so darkly contemplative at the outset, you should read it. But it's dealt with pretty extensively in this book, as Harry tries to fight his way back being able to accept forgiveness for an act he views as unforgivable. At any rate, here's the opening chapter of my newest book, Dawn of Grace, which will be available for pre-order in early June: 

A family of mallards passed silently beneath me, blissfully unaware of my presence. Actually, I had no idea what kind of ducks they were because it wasn’t quite light enough to see them clearly from the bridge. I only knew they were ducks and not geese because one of them quacked quietly once in a while. But I decided they were mallards, mainly because that was the only variety I could think of.

It had been a week since we'd received a meaningful amount of rain, but the Little Kanawha River was still the color of chocolate milk and probably would be well into summer. That was just how it looked. It didn’t seem to bother the ducks. Though normally too afraid of heights to do such a thing, I stood, feet on the bottom rung of the guardrail, and leaned as far out as I could without toppling over and down into possible oblivion. I wasn't sure which I felt more--the desire to live or the desire just never to feel anything again. That probably should have bothered me.

There was little pink remnant left in the western sky where the sun had set a bit earlier. It would be completely dark soon. I wasn’t worried about walking home alone. I live in a small town and even if I did encounter some intimidating figure, not many people scared me. I am, as my wife Dee is fond of saying, imposing. A little over six feet tall, I’m muscular and fast from years of weights, running, and martial arts. So somebody dumb enough to attack me, unless it happened to be several somebodies, would likely regret it. If I fought back. Maybe I’d take the beating. But I probably wouldn’t. I’d proven recently that I tend to struggle with impulse control.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I fished it out to find I had missed five calls and eight texts, all from either Dee or Jenn. Jenn was our daughter, though her name was still Bezaleel instead of Shalan because we were technically just her legal guardians, but she was our daughter as much as if a piece of paper said so. The last call was from her. She left a voicemail.

“Har—Harry,” she said, haltingly, “I just talked to Otis. Said you left a while ago. Where are you?  Dinner’s ready. Been ready for a while, actually. Please call me back. Please?”

There was clearly a strain in her voice. Part of me felt bad about causing her anxiety. She’d had enough pain in her life. Enough for a dozen girls her age. More than plenty for any person of any age. Her father had started molesting her when she was only ten years old, something for which her mother blamed her. Dee and I had taken her in, only to let her dad kidnap and nearly kill her. Being, again my wife’s words, a hero, I should have been able to save her, but I couldn’t even say that. That honor goes to a tiny, brave little girl named Arienne, who took on the wrath and rage of Tony Bezaleel, sacrificing herself to assuage his fury long enough for the police to catch up with them. It had been a closed casket.

But there was another part of me, the part that seemed to be making decisions, that just couldn’t allow me to go back there. To face her. To face both of my hers. Dee and Jenn were my reason to keep going. The irony was that the reasons I did what I did, for which I could never forgive myself, were those two women whom I loved more than life itself, but in committing my sin I made myself so completely filthy in my own eyes that I couldn’t bear to face them. I felt I should shout “Unclean!” every time either approached. So I compounded my sin by absenting myself from them as much as I could get away with.

But I had nowhere left to go. I was walking back home from the Parkersburg Police Department, where I’d just been talking with my best friend other than Dee, Otis Campbell. Otis was a detective and the best cop in Parkersburg, West Virginia—maybe the best anywhere. My parents, the only other people in walking distance, were out of town visiting my brother in Virginia and I’m not one to drown my troubles at a bar. So I had no choice. But I could walk slowly. I pulled up the texts, each one a little more insistent that I reply. I texted Jenn back.

“On my way. Go ahead and eat.”

“We can wait. Rather eat with you.”

My heart throbbed. “Not hungry.”

“We miss you.”

I wanted to reply that I missed them too. I did miss them so much that it was actually painful. Almost as painful as the sharp, corrosive guilt that was eating its way out through my chest. But I hated myself more than I missed them. And besides, if I said that I missed them, I knew what would come next. I wasn’t prepared to answer that question. So I was a coward. “Suit yourself. On my way.”

I turned off my phone and began the walk home, though it was at a snail’s pace and over as circuitous a route as I could come up with in my depleted mental state. Even wandering all over town, I was nearly home and it was before the two of them were likely in bed. I thought of circling the block again, but my legs were positively leaden. Maybe I could sneak onto the porch and rest on the swing without them noticing. Probably not, but it was worth a shot.

As I mounted the front stairs as stealthily as I could manage, the front door flew open. Dee stepped out, not seeming surprised when she saw me.

“Harry, where have you been?”

“Walking home.” It wasn’t a lie. I didn’t say straight home.

“It doesn’t matter.” She threw me the keys to her vehicle. I was temporarily vehicle-less after I’d wrecked my beloved Mustang on a snowy road the previous Christmas day. Really long story. “We have to go.”

“Go where?”

“Sam Howe is dead and Becca’s under arrest for his murder.”

Dee and I were couple friends with Sam and Becca right up until I took pictures, at Becca’s behest, of Sam doing unspeakable things with his secretary. Well, I didn’t have pictures of anything particularly unspeakable, but they were bad enough to know that Sam was getting his bread buttered by another woman. After that, we were friends with Becca. Sam, not so much. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he deserved to be dead, but Becca was an amazing woman who deserved a lot better than a jerk like him.

“Why do they think she did it? They’ve been apart for what, over a year?”

“Well, when they rushed into his place he was pretty badly carved up, missing an important part—won’t go into that—and she was kneeling over him covered in his blood with her hand on the knife that was stuck in his chest.”

Yeah, that might do it. 

30 Day Blog Challenge Day 30: A Weird Quirk Of Mine

We made it! Day 30 of 30 has arrived. Hard to believe how quickly it went. I've had a blast and I hope you've enjoyed it too. I hope you've gotten to know me a little better. Some of you may feel like you know me a lot better than you wanted to. At any rate, my last assignment is to write about a weird quirk of mine. I'm not sure I'm that quirky a guy. I mean I don't refuse to step on cracks or count my steps when I walk or do any of those things. But I guess there is one thing I do that's kind of quirky.

I make noises. I don't mean I make rude noises after eating too much fiber. Everybody does that, right? No, I mean I do sound effects. And the weird and quirky part is that I don't even realize I'm doing them half the time until someone gives me an odd look. Another odd thing about them is that I never learned to do them. I just realized one day my mouth made these noises. I can whistle like a bird and do other whistling sounds. I've actually fooled people into thinking there was a bird in the room. I can also roll my tongue and make an odd sound that I can only describe as being similar to a train whistle. Finally, I can make a noise that I call the 50-pound bumble bee. It involves sucking in air and I just can't even explain how it works.

Another quirky thing I do is write books. It must be somewhat quirky to do that, right? I mean, not everybody does that, so it's kind of sort of quirky. If you enjoy reading my blogs and haven't tried any of my books yet, I hope you will. If you aren't already a member of my mailing list, you can get a free download of my first book, Harsh Prey, by joining. The form is just over there to the right. All you need to do is put your email in and then you'll receive a confirmation email (if you don't get it, check your spam) that you'll need to answer. That's so no one can just put in a random email address as a joke. Plus, if you sign up by May 7, you'll be in the running for one of two signed copies of my third book, In The Shadow. And you'll hear about publication dates first, as well as receive occasional gifts and discounts. I hope you'll consider it.

Sorry for the crass commercialism there at the end. It was, admittedly, kind of a "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine." kind of moment. But hey, I'm an author. Trying to get you to buy our books is part of our quirky charm.