PUBLIC SAFETY WRITERS ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER  

Spring Newsletter 

Editor: Marilyn Meredith, mmeredith@ocsnet.net

This is your newsletter, please contribute articles, your news, book reviews, or anything else you think might be of interest.

IN THIS ISSUE:

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

EDITING

AVIATION, OR WHEN PIGS FLY

EVIDENCE ISSUES IN FICTION WRITING

PROLOGUE TO ONE FOOT IN THE BLACK

HELP A SNIPER

BLOGGING

“THE CAPTAIN’S MAN” a short story

BOOK REVIEWS

MEMBER NEWS

* * *

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Sales Pitch from the President

Now that spring is officially here (where I live in the Pacific Northwest the way you tell is that it’s 50 and raining, instead of 45 and raining) which should make us all think about the sunny weather guaranteed us at the PSWA conference in Las Vegas in July.
           
Besides the weather (which I understand might be just a little warmer than the mid 70s weather I’m used to in the summer) there are ever so many good reasons to make your plans now.
           
First, as we all know, publishing today has become in some ways more difficult and in other ways easier than it’s ever been.  So whether you’re just considering a writing project or about to publish your 10th book, the speakers you’ll hear and discussions in which you’ll participate will bring you the most up to date and best information about what your options will be now and into the future.
           
As important, the agenda leaves plenty of opportunity for you to begin networking with other writers who can be invaluable resources for you whether you need help in making sure the details in your mystery novel are flawlessly accurate, or finding out what publications will accept your technical articles, or how to find the editor or small press that best meets your needs.

You’ll also pick up great tips on marketing yourself as a writer and your book, your magazine articles, your short stories, your poetry or other genre you will need to promote.
           
Since the conference also includes the writing competition awards ceremony, you’ll have the chance to meet PSWA’s award winning writers who will also be more than happy to inscribe the books you can purchase in the conference bookstore.
           
And, how else can you spend a weekend in Las Vegas in a resort hotel for our terrific conference rate of $32 a night?
           
So, don’t wait another minute!  Click on “conference” on this website to find out all the details about registering.  See you in Las Vegas in July.

Marilyn Olsen a.k.a. The Queen

* * *

EDITING

by Marilyn Olsen

No matter who you are or how experienced a writer you are, you always need an editor.  As the author, you are too familiar with the work to see the small errors and not objective enough to see the big ones. 

Just as there are many kinds of publishing services, so, too, are there many kinds of editors.  Their services range from just catching a few punctuation errors to essentially re-writing (or even writing) a book.  Editors fall in the following categories:

Ghostwriters
Ghostwriters are perhaps the most comprehensive of all editors.  As the name suggests, ghostwriters are writers the reader never sees.  For a fee (often substantial) ghostwriters will usually do a fair amount of independent research and interview the “author” of the book, then either with or without much collaboration with the “author” whose name appears on the book, do all or at least the majority of writing, editing and dealing with agents and publishers.  Many “celebrity” books are ghostwritten as the celebrity name will sell the book although the celebrity may have little interest in the project itself or the ability to actually write a coherent sentence. 

Collaborators
Collaborators are those editors whose name often appears on the book cover following the word “with” or “and” as in: Postcard Killers by James Patterson and Lisa Marklund.  Like ghostwriters, collaborative writers work with another person to write some or all of a book.  Another difference between a ghostwriter and a collaborator is that the collaborative writer usually gets his or her name on the cover.  Another variation is when the more prominent person’s name may appear on the cover, with the collaborator’s name following the words “as told to.”  Today it is also common for the author’s name on the cover to actually be larger than the title of the book and the collaborator’s name usually in smaller type than the title.

Book Doctors
Book doctors also known as “independent” editors (as opposed to editors who work for publishers) are editors who offer to perform a variety of functions from simple line editing to complete re-writes of manuscripts to ghostwriting.  Some book doctors even provide marketing services.  As in any profession, there are reputable book doctors and not-so-reputable book doctors.  Be sure you have a contract and read it carefully.

Freelance Editors
Most editors these days are freelance editors.  While major publishing houses still do employ editors, these are editors who work with the authors whose works have already been accepted for publication, not those “diamond in the rough” manuscripts that are submitted by the thousands to publishers each year (and are almost always rejected).  Most small presses and supported self publishing businesses now offer editing services to some degree and most use freelance editors or recommend free lance editors to those whose manuscripts they’ve accepted for publication. 

Which editorial services do you need?

Every author, no matter how experienced will need at least some editing.  How much editing you will need will depend entirely on your circumstances and/or, in many cases, how much you’re willing to spend.

For those of you who are experts in a field but have never been particularly good at (or interested in) writing, a ghostwriter or collaborator may be a sensible choice.  You have all the knowledge and background - the writer has the writing skills.  Think of the collaboration as a partnership.  There’s no shame in having someone else do the wordsmithing part of your book for you.  The content is still yours and you can be proud of it.  Another advantage of a collaborator is that a collaborator can help keep the project moving along.  I was a collaborator with two different doctors writing “patient friendly” books about a disease and can guarantee you that neither of the doctors I collaborated with would ever have gotten the book written.  They were too busy with their primary profession and they tended to get way too hung up in the minute details of the subject that no lay reader would ever understand.  Not only did I do the writing for them, I served as a sounding board for what information would be useful to a consumer of medical services and what would not.  If you are finding the writing part of doing a book way too much drudgery, you should probably consider a collaborator.

Why do you need a professional editor?

You need a professional editor for the same reason you need a professional in any other context – to do an objective and professional job.  While it may be useful to show your manuscript to your friends and family, it is unlikely, knowing how much time and effort you’ve put into the project, they’ll tell you what they really think.  If you intend to market your book, you’ll be selling it to strangers who are unlikely to be so kind.  You’ll do much better in the long run having the opinion of an experienced and objective editor.  While it may be possible to have your line or copy editing (see below) done by a relative or friend, other types of editing should be done by someone who knows not just the rules of grammar but what publishers and the reading public are likely to buy.

What does an editor do?

Professional editors can perform the following tasks:

Give an overview of your work
Most editors can give you a broad overview of your work.  (This is what you get if you submit your manuscript to PSWA for a manuscript review.)

This overview will include pointing out inconsistencies in plot and characterization in fiction or content in non-fiction, problems with sentence structure and grammar or poor or inappropriate word usage and an overall view of how marketable the editor thinks your book may be. 

Copy editing
No matter how good a writer you are, you will absolutely need careful copy editing.  Again, you are way too familiar with your manuscript to see the small errors and the often hilarious mistakes that occur thanks to “spell check.”  You will need the objective eyes of an editor to find them.  Most errors in a manuscript are not many different errors, but the same error made many times. But still, they need to be corrected.  If all your manuscript needs is copy editing, you may be able to find a copy editor at a local newspaper looking for some freelance work or even a local English teacher to do this job for you.

Line editing
Line editing is the next step up in complexity from copy editing.  Line editing involves not just spelling, punctuation and grammar, but also sentence and paragraph structure.  Again, a local teacher or newspaper copy editor may be able to help you with this task, although it is unlikely either will be able to give you a realistic idea of whether the sentences and paragraphs they edit comprise a manuscript that is likely to be sold to a publisher or purchased by readers.

Comprehensive editing
Comprehensive editing involves not just cleaning up a few typos, but actually rewriting sentences, moving copy around and suggesting additions and deletions.  Even good and experienced writers usually need at least some comprehensive editing.

How to find an editor

The best way to find an editor is to ask people who’ve used this type of service.  One way to find such people is to get advice from a local writers group or an association of writers such as the Public Safety Writers Association whose members have been down this road before.  There are certainly many lists of editors and book doctors on the Internet, but like anything else you see on the net, there are reputable and not so reputable ones.  In this field, it’s generally best to go with a recommendation by someone you trust.  Beware of editors that promise that after their editing your book it will absolutely get published or those who also want to serve as your agent.  Alas, there are also scam artists out there who may pirate your work, so be careful who you send it to.

How much editing costs
Fees charged by editors vary considerably.  Editors charge by the hour, by the page or a set “project” fee.  If you are going to pay by the hour, be sure to get an estimate of the amount of time an editor expects to spend on your manuscript.  Also, it is a good idea to get a letter of agreement or contract from an editor that explicitly details the work the editor will do, the fees that will be charged, when fees will be due and when the work will be completed.

NOTE:  Before you submit your manuscript to an editor, be sure to ask what format the editor prefers.  Some will want it on a CD.  Some will ask for a double-spaced hard copy.  Some will want you to e-mail it to them.  There are now many computerized editing programs that allow the editor to show you exactly what changes were made to your manuscript.  Such programs also provide the opportunity for a lot of back and forth editing and correcting from editor to author.

Rewriting
After your manuscript has been edited, you will probably need to rewrite it to some degree.  You can hire an editor to do this for you or help you do the job yourself.  Once the rewrites are completed, the editor you’ve been working with can certainly take your manuscript and make all the corrections on it for you or you can do it yourself and save the fee the editor will charge you for this service.

Proofreading
After you have made your corrections, you should go back through your manuscript (or better yet, have someone else who has never read it go through it) one more time. Those typos have a way of creeping into a manuscript in the middle of the night.

* * *

AVIATION, OR WHEN PIGS FLY

by Tim Dees

Of all the special assignments and duties a law enforcement officer might perform, few have the panache of aviation. Top Gun meets SWAT. Aviator shades, shoulder holsters, tailored flight suits. Aviation has an extremely high CDI (Chicks Dig It) factor.

Aviation operations take on several forms. The one most often associated with police operations is air support, usually via helicopter, as depicted in the classic movie Blue Thunder. Having that “airship” (as LAPD is fond of calling them) overhead is truly a blessing. Air support can track a fleeing vehicle from high above, making it unnecessary for ground units to stay on its bumper. With a little coordination, the patrol cars can trap the speeder in a cul-de-sac or other blind alley when the driver thinks the cops have given up and gone home. Rooftop points of entry are apparent to the overhead observer when they would be missed by ground units, and the burglar will have difficulty getting out of the building without being detected by the eye in the sky. These are only a few examples of situations where air support is valuable.

So, why don’t all police agencies have helicopters? Money. Between operating costs, depreciation of the aircraft, maintenance and parts, training of the flight crew, and other budget items, it can cost over $700 per hour to keep a helicopter in the air–and that’s for an aircraft capable of carrying only a pilot and an observer. Move into aircraft that can double as air ambulances or carry SWAT teams, and the per-hour costs can double or triple. Only large or very well-funded agencies can afford that kind of outlay.

Neither as well-known or as glamorous is the practice of transporting prisoners on department airplanes. When a crook has the discourtesy to flee the local jurisdiction after having an arrest warrant issued for him, the agency holding the warrant is dependent on the kindness of their brethren in whatever locale the bad guy winds up in. If the agency with the warrant doesn’t know where their malefactor might be, they just enter the “want” onto a state or national database such as NCIC and hope that he runs afoul of the law someplace. If the crook’s whereabouts is known, the outfit holding his arrest warrant can ask the locals to go over and pick him up.

For either one to happen, the agency holding the warrant has to be willing to fetch, or extradite him. Extradition is not necessary if the fugitive hasn’t crossed a state line. All that is needed then is to drive over and pick him up. If more than one state is involved, then things get more complicated. Each state is a sovereign government, and one state’s laws do not apply in other states. If Joe Thug is wanted in Utah but has fled to Nevada, the governor of Utah must ask the governor of Nevada to allow Utah officers to go to Nevada and bring him back. This is usually a pro forma deal, as Nevada has enough bad guys of its own and is all too happy to send Joe back where he came from.

Joe Thug has a right to challenge his extradition. When he appears in the Nevada court after having been arrested on the Utah warrant, he can claim that he has been wrongly accused, or is the victim of a government conspiracy, or fears he will be eaten by ferrets if he is brought back to Utah. The judge hearing this petition can decide that Joe has a point, and refer the case to the Nevada governor for final disposition. If the Nevada governor buys Joe’s story, Joe is safe as long as he doesn’t venture outside of Nevada.

This almost never happens. One time it did was in the case of Dennis Banks, one of the co-founders of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Banks and 300 other people were arrested in Custer, SD in 1973 during a protest demonstration. Banks was convicted in state court of riot and assault, and sentenced to prison. He fled to California to avoid the prison term. Jerry Brown was governor of California at the time (as he is again), and refused to allow South Dakota officers to extradite Banks back to serve his prison term, accepting Banks’ claim that he was a political prisoner and would be in jeopardy of his life if he was taken back to South Dakota. Banks enjoyed a fairly public life in California until Brown left office in 1983 and was succeeded by George Deukmejian. The new governor’s first act in office was to sign Banks’ extradition warrant, but by then Banks had fled to the Onondaga Indian reservation in upstate New York, which is another sovereign. Banks eventually left the reservation and surrendered in South Dakota, where he served 18 months in prison.

There is a commonly held belief that a state can extradite only for very serious offenses, like rape, murder and robbery. This is not so. The only requirements for extradition are that the state that holds the warrant has to be willing to go get the fugitive, and that the state where the fugitive is residing is willing to allow the other state’s officers to enter and bring him back. I know of a municipal (city) court that regularly sends city marshals to adjacent states to return people who skip out on misdemeanor charges of DUI and domestic battery.

The reason that extraditions don’t happen more often is cost. Typically, the agency holding the arrest warrant has to buy plane tickets to send two officers to the fugitive’s city, pay for a night of lodging and meals, and then buy a third one-way ticket for the fugitive’s return trip. The fugitive can mess up the program by refusing to get on the airplane. An airline captain can refuse any passenger he believes will endanger the safety of his aircraft or passengers, and a combative prisoner is a sure-fire refusal. Officers acting as extradition escorts are generally armed (one of the few times that non-federal officers carry firearms on commercial aircraft), and the captain doesn’t want to risk a gun grab in flight.

This is one of the ways an aviation unit can be handy. If a police or sheriff’s department can acquire an airplane capable of hauling at least four people, they can run their own extraditions much more cheaply and quickly than with commercial air carriers, at least within the fuel range of the airplane (and farther if the crew is willing to stop and refuel en route). Moreover, a prisoner who refuses to board the airplane as a passenger will simply be regarded as cargo. Either way, he’s getting on the airplane. Instead of paying for airfares, hotels, and the salaries of two officers for two days, the agency pays the cost of flying the plane and three officers (two pilots, one guard) for less than a day.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has a small fleet of helicopters and fixed wing aircraft that are used for patrol support, search and rescue operations, and extraditions. In the 1980s, the extradition missions were flown by reserve officers who were experienced pilots. They would fly a department aircraft to wherever a prisoner was, and bring him back. Reserves generally aren’t paid, but the pilot got the flight hours and the department got the fugitive. Win-win.

In police jargon, a “frequent flyer” doesn’t have anything to do with aviation. He (or she) is a person who is arrested with such regularity that most of the officers know them by name and criminal history. One of my former agency’s frequent flyers was an individual named Arthur. Most frequent flyers are amiable types who are more nuisances than anything else, and when arrested, they are all too happy to go to jail and get off the street for a while. Arthur had a different approach. He would find a cop on a traffic stop or walking downtown, and would either take a swing at the cop or spit on him. This seldom went well for Arthur, but he saw no reason to mend his ways. When I was training new officers, I would warn them about Arthur, and they would immediately ask what Arthur looked like. I told them his likeness could be found in a reverse imprint on the hoods of many patrol cars, where his face had collided with the assistance of Arthur’s latest victim.

Arthur had apparently been a Las Vegas resident at one time, as he had a $5000 arrest warrant there for some minor charge. The high bail was a Las Vegas trademark. At the time, if you failed to appear on relatively minor charges like soliciting for prostitution, petty theft, DUI, and so on, the Las Vegas court would issue an arrest warrant and set a suspiciously high bail. Their intended message was clear: “Get out of town.” The Las Vegas authorities would not venture two inches beyond the boundaries of Clark County to fetch someone on a misdemeanor charge, and as long as you stayed out of town, you were someone else’s problem.

One day, I was finishing up with booking a prisoner at the city jail when I noticed a Las Vegas Metro officer, wearing a flight suit, in the break room. The officer was a reserve pilot, there to pick up a fugitive and bring him back to Las Vegas. Arthur was serving time for his latest transgression, and was wandering around the jail, sweeping the floor. I brought Arthur’s outstanding Las Vegas warrant to the attention of the reserve officer, who replied, innocently, “Load him up. I’ve got room.” The jail staff, who liked Arthur about as much as the patrol force did, set a new speed record for out-processing Arthur, and the muni court judge was all too happy to commute the balance of Arthur’s sentence in exchange for unloading him. Arthur went out the door in shackles, rasping, “You can’t do this to me! You can’t do this to me!” We never saw Arthur again. Las Vegas, you’re welcome.

Our department acquired a six-place airplane, which was flown by two regular officers who worked in an administration office and had the aviation/extradition duties as a collateral assignment. That was the way it was intended. If you asked the officers, aviation was their primary assignment, and the office duties were collateral. One man’s ceiling, and so on. Tom, the senior of the two officers, had been flying in general aviation for a while, and had recently acquired his commercial license. The other officer, Stan, had only been with us a few years, but had been a commercial airline pilot at one time, and had his Airline Transport rating, the Ph.D. of pilot’s licenses. Where Tom had a few hundred hours of flight time, Stan had several thousand. Both were competent pilots, but I heard several knowledgeable officers tell me that Stan was one of the best pilots they had ever seen.

This disconnect between flight experience and seniority created a certain amount of friction between the two pilots. At my agency, as with many others, seniority is king. Any dispute can be settled with a statement along the lines of “How many years you got on? [answer: fewer than the person asking the question] Well, when you’ve been here as long as I have, you’ll know…” It doesn’t matter whether the topic is baseball scores or quantum physics—seniority decides the argument.

Still, Stan had the upper hand in the aviation area, and he never let Tom forget about it. One day, Tom came to work to find Stan’s desk adorned with a new plastic nameplate:

OFFICER STAN _________
CHIEF PILOT

Tom was livid. Stan was, in fact, “pilot in command” when in the air, but for a junior to assert a superior status to a senior was a breach of etiquette. By the end of the week, Tom had acquired his own nameplate:

OFFICER TOM ___________
SENIOR PILOT

We all knew this wasn’t over. It wasn’t long before Stan came to work in uniform one day. Admin pogues usually wore coats and ties to work. Stan and Tom took every opportunity to find some reason to go to the airport, and instead opted for khakis and bright colored golf shirts with miniature badges and their names embroidered thereon. The reason for the uniform soon became apparent. Stan had commissioned a set of gold pilot’s wings with a police department seven-point star at the center. He wore this proudly on his uniform shirt, just below his badge. If he hadn’t worn the uniform, he wouldn’t have been able to wear the wings.

Tom, of course, was beside himself. Not only had Stan procured only one set of wings, he wouldn’t tell Tom where they had come from. It was clear that Tom had a new mission in life. Vengeance, or wings, whichever came first, would be his.

The second volley of the War of the Wings was epic. Tom’s wings were so large and ornate, they had aerodynamic characteristics of their own. They were half again as large as Stan’s, and the central badge was surrounded by a wreath. The state seal at the center of the badge was in full color enamel, where Stan’s was plain gold.

Unfortunately for them both, neither set of wings had been authorized under existing uniform general orders, so they had to be retired.

Tom and Stan joined forces for their next effort. Regular uniforms, being, well, uniform, didn’t lend the necessary panache to the intrepid airmen they were, and the golf shirt and khaki combination was far too pedestrian. They needed flight suits, one-piece tailored coveralls made of Nomex fire-resistant fabric, so that they should survive an in-flight conflagration. This was a hard sell, given that Nomex flight suits were around $800 per copy (they are considerably cheaper now), but management caved on the purchase. It wouldn’t do to have their aviators perish in flames when the death could be prevented.
The flight suits were lovely. Badges, wings and names were embroidered in gold on the royal blue fabric, not unlike the Navy’s Blue Angels (I don’t think the similarity was coincidental). The flyboys acquired matching tan leather shoulder holsters for their six-inch revolvers, as shoulder holsters also have a high CDI factor. They briefly accessorized the flight suits with gold ascot-like dickies until the level of ridicule from more plebian cops became too much to bear.

What neither the Chief Pilot nor the Senior Pilot knew when they were campaigning for the flight suits is that Nomex is unforgivingly stiff and does not breathe, so wearers perspire furiously in even moderate heat. Nevada is the driest and one of the warmest states in the Union, and the small aircraft they flew was not equipped with air conditioning. It wasn’t long before the pilots were wearing the flight suits to work, then changing when they got to the airport.

Most of the extraditions were day trips, out and back within 1000 miles or so. The pilots would fly the plane, while a third officer (or two) kept an eye on the prisoner. Few prisoners were any trouble, so it was pretty cushy duty.

Whenever a police department employee traveled on business, they were entitled to a per diem payment for meals and incidental expenses. It wasn’t very much—about $20 per day—but declining any amount of money from the city was considered to be un-American. The per diem was paid in advance of the trip. Typically, the senior officer on the trip would serve as the “banker,” and be issued a check that covered everyone’s expenses. The banker would walk downtown to a casino (which we frequently used as banks) and cash the check. He would then bring back the cash and distribute it among the travelers. Each was free to live large or eat at McDonald’s and pocket the excess.

Stan knew that few officers ever traveled anywhere on the city’s dime, and decided to exploit this ignorance of policy. At the outset of the trip, he would tell the officer serving as the prisoner escort that his meals were being taken care of by the city, so sit back and enjoy the ride. Stan would then steer the escort to Burger King and Taco Bell, and tell his fellow officer to pick the Happy Meal of his choice. Stan kept the difference.

This enterprise went on without a hitch until one of the escort officers completed a trip and came home to his wife, who was also a police officer. Whenever female prisoners were being transported, a female officer had to come with them, so the few women officers we had traveled more frequently than the men. When the little woman asked how much of her husband’s meal money he had managed to bring home with him, the game was up.

When internal affairs looked into Stan’s business practices, they found he had taken some other fiscal liberties. On more than one occasion, Stan had struck up a conversation with another pilot at some distant airport, and offered to fill up his new friend’s airplane with gas, charging it to the city credit card. Stan would collect $100 or so (a fraction of the actual cost) for his trouble. No one noticed that the fuel economy of the city airplane varied significantly from trip to trip.

Stan was fired in short order, and was prosecuted for felony embezzlement. He tried desperately to cop a plea to a misdemeanor. One of the requirements to keep an Airline Transport rating is to be of “good moral character,” and a felony conviction is evidence to the contrary. He eventually ate the felony, and fell off our radar. I imagine he kept the wings and the flight suit.

* * *

EVIDENCE ISSUES IN FICTION WRITING

by Holli Castillo

I read a novel a few years ago where the plot was based upon a detective needing to get more evidence so a D.A. would prosecute a case.  It was very Law and Order-ish, one of those where the prosecutor said that because the only evidence in the case was circumstantial, charges couldn’t be filed.  As a result, the detective had to either get more evidence, or get a confession.  The book revolved around the detective seeking out new evidence and eventually trying to wear the suspect down to confess.

You see this a lot in t.v. legal dramas, and occasionally in police procedurals, legal thrillers, or mysteries featuring D.A.’s and police departments or sheriff’s offices.  Sometimes, the premise makes sense.  Other times, however, like in the book I read, it doesn’t.

There is a lot of confusion when it comes to circumstantial evidence–not just in fiction among t.v. and novel writers, but in real life with judges, lawyers, jurors, and defendants.  Especially defendants, who think, like many writers, that circumstantial evidence is not enough to convict.

There is nothing wrong with circumstantial evidence, and  good circumstantial evidence can be more compelling than bad or questionable direct evidence.  Defendants are convicted all the time, some of capital offenses and put on death row, based on circumstantial evidence.

Circumstantial evidence consists of proof of facts and circumstances from which the existence of the main fact may be inferred. The most common example used by lawyers is a rain example– suppose you are inside a windowless courtroom, and people walk in, soaking wet, carrying wet umbrellas.  Even if you can’t see the rain or hear the thunder from inside the courtroom, you can reasonably infer it’s raining from the circumstances.

Direct evidence is much simpler– such as if a person walked outside and saw the rain himself.  While direct evidence would seem to be the best evidence, there are instances when that is not necessarily the case.  For example, if a homeless-looking man walked into the same courtroom alone, dry as a bone, mumbling to himself, and suddenly blurted out that he saw it raining outside, that would be considered direct evidence of rain.  But in that scenario, the man’s credibility may be at issue, so that it would have been more probative to have three or four soaking wet people silently walk in as opposed to one dry crazy man saying he saw the rain.

Which brings me to my pet peeve when, on t.v. shows and novels, the writer doesn’t come up with a valid reason for sending the detectives out to look for more evidence or get that confession.  In the novel I read those years ago, the circumstantial evidence was ample, and I think any D.A. would have gladly charged the suspect with the crime.  The t.v. show Law and Order SVU is famous for an assistant prosecutor ordering Elliot Stabler to get a confession, even when the evidence was sufficient to charge and probably convict.   

What bothers me the most about this is that the writers, by doing a few minutes of research and using a little imagination, could easily have come up with a realistic premise.  There are many instances the D.A. might want additional evidence and/or a confession, that doesn’t necessarily include blaming it on circumstantial evidence. 

In the case of the book I read, the weak premise made everything that happened in the book seem unnecessary, and thus made the entire book seem unnecessary, which is a risk I don’t think most writers want to take.  There’s the harm– writers can lose credibility with these little things that could easily have been avoided.

And that brings me to this week’s SVU episode, where, once again, someone had to get a confession.  Only this time it wasn’t Elliot who had to try for a confession, it was a psychiatrist played by Jeremy Irons.  Okay, I can see the writers setting it up so Jeremy Irons had to get a confession, it’s all about the drama.  And I had to admit this week was one of the first times SVU actually came up with a semi-valid reason for needing a confession.  They pretty much pulled the suspect out of thin air, based on a wild hunch that turned out to be correct, and the circumstantial evidence was so weak it almost wasn’t evidence at all.  Each time they found a piece of evidence, the writers had a reason as to why it wasn’t sufficient to charge and convict, and for the most part, I agreed that a confession could help in that case. So kudos to the writers this week to doing their homework and actually coming with a somewhat logical basis for needing a confession.

In most of the cases I have handled where a confession was obtained, there was adequate evidence to convict without it.  In those cases where suspects are stupid enough to confess, they usually are also stupid enough to have left evidence behind like a trail of bread crumbs leading directly back to them.  So in real life, it’s a lot more rare to get a good confession when you actually need it than it is in fiction.  

Since obtaining confessions or searching for additional evidence does make for good drama, writers shouldn’t shy away from it, but make sure that they have set up a valid premise for the necessity of the confession or evidence, so they don’t lose their credibility with their readers.

www.hollicastillo.com

* * *

PROLOGUE to One Foot in the Black, A Wildland Firefighter's Story
by Kurt Kamm
                            
A year ago, I saw a man go up in flames.

Our helitak crew was fighting the Pozo Fire in the Los Padres National Forest in Central California. That morning, we dropped onto a remote ridge on Black Mountain. Our job was to cut a control line along the flank of the fire burning in the valley below. We struggled to clear a three-foot wide break through thick brush on the side of the mountain.

Without warning, the wind changed direction and a firestorm with a ninety-foot wall of
flames roared up the canyon at us. In a heartbeat, the oxygen was gone, hot smoke and
ash filled the air, and we couldn’t breathe. Our entire crew was caught off guard.

It was every firefighter’s nightmare. The heat was staggering. The brush was an inferno.
Trees weren’t burning, they were exploding. Trapped on rugged, steep terrain, we had
notime to deploy our fire shelters. Our only escape was to climb back up the fireline to
our safe zone. We shouted warnings, dropped tools and daypacks and clawed our way up
the side of the canyon.

We had sixty seconds to escape the firestorm, which was nearly upon us. I felt the radiant
heat on my neck and wrists, and I knew I would die from breathing superheated air
before I burned to death. I looked back and saw TB, our Captain, for a few seconds
before he disappeared behind the wall of fire. If he cried out, I couldn’t hear him. The
roar of the blaze was deafening. Jake, Luis, and everyone else in the crew made it to the
safe zone. TB perished.

In a state of shock and anguish, we were pulled off the fireline and airlifted back to the
incident command post. We received medical treatment and were sent back to Los
Angeles. Our physical injuries were minor, but each of us struggled to cope with the
death of our Captain. It hit me hardest because TB was my mentor, my substitute father.
We went out on stress leave and the Los Angeles County Fire Department sent us to see
their psychiatrist for a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing.

Fighting a wildland fire is dangerous business and entrapment is always possible. At least
once in every firefighter’s life he fights for survival and thinks the unthinkable. The Pozo
Fire, one for the record books, started July 23, 2001 and burned 149,000 acres. It
occurred the year after I came to California to escape a lifetime of abuse and neglect from
my real father. My struggle to survive his mistreatment continued long after I recovered
from the events on Black Mountain. 
-----
 One Foot in the Black: A position on the fireline which is next to an area already burned (“the black”). It is at once the most dangerous place, usually close to the flames, and the safest place,  a safe zone into which escape is possible.

* * *

HELP A SNIPER

by John M. Wills

Sniper/Observers and SWAT operators, stop for a moment and think about how difficult your job is. Now, imagine trying to do your job without the proper equipment. That’s exactly what many of our military snipers are faced with each time they take a shot that might make the difference between their unit being ambushed or pinned down, and successfully completing the mission.

The lack of proper equipment came to light when many of our colleagues in law enforcement were being deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They found that when they left their respective police departments and joined their military units as sniper/observers, their military equipment was often substandard or sometimes missing. So in 2003 a small group of LE snipers came together to solve this unacceptable situation. Recognizing that the war on terror would never have a firm end date, they formed a support network to address the operational equipment needs of U.S. military snipers deployed abroad.

The first attempt at forming some type of organization that would fund and ship equipment overseas to U.S. military snipers was the brain child of Brian Sain, Port Arthur, Texas, Police Department. He started a loosely formed group and named it: Adopt a Sniper. It was a grass roots effort, spread by word of mouth, among friends and families to support peace officers serving in the National Guard and Reserve. As the officers were deployed as snipers in various theaters of war, they quickly realized that their military mission resembled their police mission at home. The glaring difference was they lacked the equipment they utilized at home. These Warriors sent messages back regarding the equipment they needed, knowing that trying to get the equipment through proper military channels and protocol would take forever.

Often, the LE personnel deployed overseas would use their own funds and equipment to complete their mission. But it didn’t take long for them to realize they could ill afford to purchase needed equipment, and so they resorted to using their already well-established network consisting of the U.S. police and military communities. The Adopt a Sniper program soon became known as AmericanSnipers.org, and broadened its scope to include not only fully trained sniper teams, but also designated marksman.

Why marksman, you might ask? Because even though they lack the training snipers have, they are expected to perform the same tasks with neither the weapon nor ancillary equipment associated with snipers. Assigned to mechanized units and other non-infantry units, they most often utilize the venerable but very old M14 rifle, yet despite the odds they get the job done.

When these highly motivated troops need equipment, their first channel to contact is their respective units. Should that fail, the AmericanSnipers.org can then be contacted for help. The group can supply the needs of the individual sniper and ship the equipment directly to the sniper himself. At the end of that sniper’s deployment, he passes the equipment on to his replacement or keeps it if he re-enlists for overseas duty in a sniper billet.

Where and how are funds raised to support this extraordinary cause? It’s funded entirely by civic donations, fund raisers, and serviced by a highly motivated volunteer force that is dedicated to the cause. No one receives a paycheck for their efforts. Time is donated, and the volunteers pay their own expenses.

I recently met several of these humble folks at the Shot Show in Las Vegas, were they were working tirelessly at a table selling promotional items. Ron Sasaki, Bonney Lake Police Department in Washington, was busy at a table in a space donated by Armalite. Other corporate sponsors donating space for tables were Center Mass and Leupold. Ron told me that the organization sells various items such as hats, calendars, patches, challenge coins, and t-shirts, at trade shows and other events. All monies go toward maintaining their website, purchasing equipment, and shipping.

As the calendar turned to year 2011, AmericanSnipers.org has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and helped more than 750 units. In 2007, The National Defense Industrial Association awarded the Carlos N. Hathcock II Award to AmericanSnipers. What this band of dedicated cops has accomplished on a shoe-string budget is truly amazing. Operating as a 501C3, they are constantly seeking donations of both money and gear. Individuals, businesses, or anyone who wants to help our soldiers win the war on terror can go to the organization’s website: http://www.americansnipers.org/ or contact Doug Bourdo, mildot154@sbcglobal.net, phone: (262)287-8043.

Don’t have enough money to give a large amount? Here are some items you can donate that will make a difference:  all types of batteries, including AAs, 123A 3-volt Lithium; and DL13N - Duracell - a little larger than watch battery size, body armor, illumination tools, Blackhawk Strike gear, gloves, goggles, carabineers, and comfort items such as powdered hot chocolate, baby wipes, Chapstick, and film. 

Dig deep and Stay Safe, brothers and sisters!

* * *

BLOGGING

by Marilyn Meredith

Begin by setting up your blog with one of the free sites. I prefer Blogger.com but there are many others such as WordPress. Do a Google search to find them all.

Spend some time figuring out all the features on the blog. Set up the blog the way you want it. (It’s also fun to change it from time to time.)

Tell people about yourself and be sure there’s a way for readers to contact you. Put your photo on your blog. If you have books, add the covers in the side bar.

Be careful with the background and the print. Avoid light print on a light background. Many don’t like white print on black.

There are gadgets you can put on the blog like Tweet and Facebook and people will click on those and do some of the work of promoting your blog. You can add a place where people can subscribe to the post, or sign up as a friend.

Decide what you want your blog to be about. Mine is about me, my books, what I’m doing and I have guest authors. I avoid politics and I don’t preach. However, politics may be your thing and that’s what you’ll focus on.

If you don’t keep your language clean, a warning sign will be put up that the blog is only for 18 and older.

Add pictures that illustrate the post, people love pictures.

Don’t write too long or too short. Change what you post often. I try to blog every day and that’s one of the reasons I like guest authors to stop by.

When posting a URL be sure to use the link gadget in the toolbar so when someone clicks on it, it’ll go through.

You can blog ahead of time and set up what day you want the blog to appear.

Check the blog for comments and/or questions. You should respond to them.

You can check out your statistics and see how many page views you’ve had and where people are who are reading your page.

In order to lure people to your blog you need to advertise and you do that by being on Facebook, Twitter and other Social Networking sites and announcing what you’re writing about and giving the URL.

Key words are important. When setting up each blog there’s a place to insert key words. They should be words that appear in your blog. This is how Google and other search engines find your blog.

Book publishers, big and small, expect you to do the major part of the promoting.

Some small publishers expect you to have a marketing plan available when you send in a query. These are some of the things they want:

Webpage
Blog or Blogs
Facebook
Twitter
Blog Tours
Any other social networking sites you may be on.
Book marks and/or address cards
Other things you’re willing to do online and in person.

My personal blog: http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com
Every Tuesday I blog for: http://thestilettogang.blogspot.com
First and third Tuesday I blog for: http://makeminemystery.blogspot.com
At least once a month I blog on: http://criminalmindsatwork.blogspot.com

* * *

THE CAPTAIN’S MAN
           
by John Bray

My promotion from patrolman to sergeant in the New York City Police Department had come at an inauspicious time in my career. Most cops would have seen that promotion and assignment to the Fifth Precinct as beneficence from the Fates in those days. Given its locale, many perceived the Fifth as having certain hidden perquisites. Just then, however, I had targeted my focus elsewhere. I reported to the captain as soon as I arrived, stood at attention on the worn carpet of his office, “What do you want?” he said without looking up from the papers on his cluttered desk.

“I need to request tour assignments that don’t conflict with my night classes in law school, Captain.”

“Aw, what did they send me now?” he explained pleasantly. “Just what I need around here, students.”

“I have a written order from the Chief Inspector that authorizes steady tours,” I blurted.

“Steady tours? You’ll work the regular rotation same as everybody else, when a four-to-midnight conflicts with school hours you do a day tour. That’s all you get.”

“Yes sir,” my only answer, before he changed his mind. I did an about face and exited, happy to have gotten that much.

Awkward at first, and thrust into an unfamiliar role, I discovered that the precinct sergeants formed a secret cabal to which I had no entree. To add to my excitement, the roll-call clerk who prepared the duty rosters, made sure I received every assignment that did not involve patrol in the Fifth Precinct. The secret cabal had tentacles everywhere. Only when there weren’t enough sergeants to man the supervisory zones in the Fifth, did I get a patrol assignment within my own command. Most other times I was assigned to adjoining precincts as a fill-in, or the City Hall protective detail. My colleagues preferred me anywhere but the sergeant’s car in the precinct, and Bill Riordan reigned as senior sergeant. 

Tall and heavily built, Bill returned to the Fifth Precinct stationhouse at the change of tours about four o’clock on a late autumn afternoon.

“Hey, John,” he shouted. His exuberance warmed the heart.

“Hey yourself, Bill, how’s it going?” I cheered in reply.

Bill had finished his day tour from eight to four as a replacement in a neighboring precinct. An old warrior in many senses of the word, a veteran of European combat in the Army during WW II, as well as a seasoned cop of long service, his tenure as sergeant spanned several years. He wore the veneer of cynicism as befit street-hardened men inured by constant patrol in crime-ridden precincts. Bill functioned as unofficial liaison between the precinct sergeants and the commanding officer: the Captain’s man. My vivid memory of his bizarre escapade on that fall day in 1968 still resonates.

In the cramped, dingy sergeants’ locker room, I changed into uniform and prepared to start the four-to-midnight tour. The stationhouse, an ancient dilapidated building, featured stairways that creaked when trod upon and floors that sloped at odd angles. The rats, our co-tenants, crept around like furtive, sinister shadows. The decades-old specter of human misery clung to the grimy, paint-peeled walls.

A creation of nineteenth-century architecture located on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side sandwiched between two other bedraggled buildings, its provenance matched its surroundings. Chinatown encircled it on the south side of Canal Street, Little Italy and its run-down tenements teemed with people on the north. The large, filigreed iron, green-glassed sconces that bracketed the wooden doorway on the exterior wall evoked an aura of a musty bygone age.

Bill strode into the second floor locker room that day showing the effects of a tour spent drinking. He burst through the door, slammed it behind him, and made no effort to conceal his buoyant, playful mood. He shed his gun belt, hung it over the open door of his locker, slumped down on the bare mattress of the antique metal bunk, and cradled his head with his hands as he lazed back against its steel pipe head-frame. 

“This job stinks, did you know that, John?” he said with a mischievous glint in his eye.  

“Yeah, Bill, it sure does,” I said, as I buckled on my own gun belt. 

“Hey, John,” Bill said, while he stared up at a bare bulb that protruded from the ceiling above the bunk. 

“Yeah, Bill?”

“John, do me a favor. Reach over there by my locker and hand me my gun.”

 “Sure, Bill.”

I entered into the spirit of the foolishness with no inkling of what came next. I released the revolver from its holster, turned it butt first and handed it to him. Back at my locker I buttoned my uniform jacket. With peripheral vision I saw him point the weapon at the ceiling, the hammer cocked. He sighted down the barrel arms extended, hands entwined, finger on the trigger. His left eye shut, his right eye aimed in the classic attitude of someone fixed on a target.

The first shot caught me completely off guard. My ears rang with the sound reverberating in the enclosed space. I snapped around to see the wisps of powdered plaster that floated in the air from the impact of the bullet that had pierced the antiquated, molded tin leaf ceiling above his head. 

“Ah beans, missed the sucker,” Bill snarled.

He had fired at the light bulb. I snatched up my cap and nightstick determined to put distance between that closed-in locker room and me. As I reached for the doorknob, Bill had recocked his gun. The second discharge, with the second puff of powdery plaster lent additional haste to my departure. 

“Aw nuts,” Bill exclaimed, “missed again.”

I had forgotten the episode until several days later at the end of a day tour, when I returned from patrol, the desk lieutenant handed me a notice to see the Captain. I knocked on his office door.

“Come in.” A growl from behind the closed door ushered me in.

“Yes, Captain. You wanted to see me?”

“Somebody told me there were shots fired from the sergeants’ locker room a few days ago. You know anything about it?”

“No, I don’t, Cap.”

I tried to keep a straight face.

 “You were the only one assigned to the four-to-twelve that day. Who do you think did it?” he asked. “I may have to reconsider my permission for you to switch tours for school. You know I’m going to find out, sooner or later.”

“Yes Captain, I understand.”

“Now, get out of here.” Captain Lotz had a succinct turn of phrase.

Certain that it wouldn’t take much for him to knock me out of any special tours, I also knew that in the unlikely event someone recovered ballistics evidence, it would not match my weapon.

 A few days after my brusque interview with Captain Lotz, I arrived at the station house to begin my tour. I pushed through the front door, there stood Bill beside the desk officer’s station, his elbows on the corner of the chipped mahogany structure, his arms folded, propped on the wooden surface. His uniform cap, set back at an angle from his forehead, exposed a shock of prematurely white hair; an expansive Cheshire Cat grin creased his florid, spider-veined features.

“Hey, John, come over here for a minute, I got to tell you a story. This’ll kill you.”

“What’s up, Bill?”

“The other day Captain Lotz called me in to his office. He said that a detective from the squad upstairs came to him with two spent rounds. He told the Captain that he was by his locker in the detectives’ room, a floor above ours, when two shots came through the floor near where he stood. Scared the pants off of him,” Bill could scarcely contain his mirth as he depicted the detective’s plaintive narration to the captain.   

“The detective assured him they came from the sergeants’ locker room. The Skipper wanted me to nose out the culprit.”

“So what did you do?” Apprehension started to twist my insides.

Hilarity overcame him as he recounted his conversation with the commanding officer.

“The Captain said, ‘look at these, Bill.’ He showed me the spent rounds and repeated the detective’s story. Then he told me, ‘I know who did this, too.’  I said, ‘No kiddin’, Skipper, who do you think?’ He mentioned a name. I won’t tell you who he thought.”

“And what happened next?” I asked.

Bill chuckled. He relished his role as sly conspirator.

“I told him, ‘no Cap, I did it.’ Then he said, ‘for the love of Mike, Bill, what’ll I do now?’ and I said, ‘listen Skipper, prepare a Crime Report and refer it to the detectives, they’ll never, ever solve it.’”

* * *

BOOK REVIEWS

Targeted by John M.Wills

Targeted is the third book in the Chicago Warriors series published by TotalRecall Publications, Inc.

This story is about a former Army sniper targeting Chicago police officers. It is also about the members of the police department hunting down this elusive and dangerous threat. It is also about a priest who has been falsely accused of molesting a boy he befriended.

Targeted is a true page-turner with plenty of action, but what I liked best is the characters are realistic. There are a couple of bad cops, but the story focuses on the good ones. The good cops are real people with families and problems, cops who have religious convictions and sometimes doubts about their beliefs. The investigative work develops naturally and realistically. There are no super heroes only real officers doing real police work.

John Wills has presented an excellent work of suspense with Targeted.

To learn more about John Wills and the other books in his series, visit http://www.johnmwills.com

--Reviewed by Marilyn Meredith, author of Angel Lost from Oak Tree Press

* * *

MEMBER NEWS

Our own technology expert, Tim Dees, is again featured in http://policemag.com  with a color photo article entitled “New Developments in ALPR” which stands for Automated License Plate Recognition.It’s a fascinating update on emerging technology.
Congrats Tim!

* * *

Mike Orenduff won the prestigious Lefty award at Left Coast Crime for Best Humorous Mystery!

The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein (The Pot Thief Murder Mystery #3)

Author: Orenduff, J. Michael
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Mystery Novel
Page Count: 212pp.
Pub. Date: October 2010
Publisher: Dark Oak Mysteries
Author Website: Welcome to the Pot Thief Murder Mysteries Website.

Appraising a collection of Anasazi pots strikes Hubie Schuze as an easy way to pick up a fast twenty-five hundred even though he has to be blindfolded on the trip to the reclusive collector’s house.

He finds three of his own Anasazi copies in the collection, but what he doesn’t find when the driver drops him back home are the twenty-five crisp hundred dollar bills the collector gave him. Getting his money back requires Hubie to find a place he visited in a blindfold, and the only clues to its location are his three copies.

When Detective Whit Fletcher forces Hubie to identify a John Doe at the morgue, it turns out to be the collector. Hubie is not a suspect — yet. But the longer Hubie pursues his missing appraisal fee, the more tangled he becomes in the shadowy life of the collector.

* * *

Ed Nowicki reports  “AMERICAN BLUE will have its official release date during National Police Week in May, 2011. I'll be in Washington, DC for National Police Week, and I'm traveling and sharing a room with my best friend, Harvey Hedden, who is the current executive director of ILEETA. We hope to sell a ton of books in DC!

“AMERICAN BLUE is published by Varro Press. We have a few PSWA members who have their stories accepted by the publisher. 100% of the royalties are donated to the building of the National Law Enforcement Museum in Washington, DC. I'm proud of the fact that all of the story writers contributed to AMERICAN BLUE for free. These are all very giving and unselfish people.”

* * *
Keith Bettinger’s story, “Scars of the Heart” was written a couple of year ago. It won first prize at last year’s Public Safety Writers Association short story non-fiction contest. Ed Nowicki included the story in his new book, an anthology of Law Enforcement stories in AMERICAN BLUE.  As noted above, all the profits from the book go to building the National Police Museum near the National Law Enforcement Memorial in Washington, DC. 

* * *
Kregg P. J. Jorgenson’s book, Stalking the Dragon, took first place in the Reader Views Literary Awards competition. Small press publications rule! This is what he had to say about the book and the win:

“I entered Stalking the Dragon in the 2010 Reader Views Literary Awards competition in the humor category and it tied for First Place. The book is an absurd war adventure/comedy and I think I was grinning the entire time I was writing it. The competition is open to University press, other small press, self published or POD books. Their criteria can be found on their web page. It's something worth checking out.
 
“As for the latest project, I'm finishing up on my novel, A Long Road Back, a Civil War era book, that will probably generate hundreds of pennies in royalties...who knows, maybe even four! Hey, money may be a small part of why we write (although I'd prefer it to take on a larger role) but we're writers, motivated by the word and the effect it can have. So I will bask in my momentary spotlight, fake humility (aw shucks), and keep plugging away at it.
 
“Also, I'm contemplating writing a book entitled, Commas, the Bastards.”

* * *
From John Briant:

“Pat J Malin, a contributing writer for several publications in Central New York approached me for a profile and this is the results. This publication 55-Plus Magazine has a wide distribution and has given me excellent coverage for my new book;
Adirondack Detective VII which is coming out in late Spring of 2011.

This particular issue is for Feb-Mar and is located in numerous places,  I am already receiving feed back. There was additional bio information however this fit well for the purpose of getting the word out.  The url below is the article scanned from the magazine. 55-Plus is a Magazine for active adults.
 
http://cny55.com/issues/2011/02/john-briant-81/

* * *

REVIEW OF BARBARA M. HODGES LATEST BOOK,  ICE

Authors Barbara M Hodges and Randolph Tower take their readers on a wild ride to stop a killer before it’s too late.

Imagine being so heartless you would not think twice about slitting someone’s throat.  Cold blooded, Sherice Solomon, aka Ice, is moving west.

Santa Maria, California is the turf of Detective Darcie Devonshire.   She is positive Ice has made his way to the central coast after recognizing his calling card when a body is found in a dumpster with the signature of Ice: one slit around the throat.

 With her loyal partner Wes, who treats her like a mother hen despite her gripes, Darcie Devonshire will learn the true meaning of loyalty and friendship as she fights for her life when a dangerous and maniacal killer stretches her cold arms of death in her direction.
Morgan Garrett, Darcie’s ex partner and lover from the CIA, is found standing beside the dead man, with no recollection of how he got there or why he is in the alley.

 Drunken stupors can get in the way of anyone’s memory, but Morgan has an alibi. He is freed, and then things take a wild turn when he decides to sober up by going to a clinic for substance abuse.  Pacific Winds is where he will meet their newest employee, Sherice Solomon, clinical psychologist. As a clinical psychologist at Pacific Winds, she is in a prime position to manipulate Morgan Garrett who is already vulnerable and trying to sober up.  What a clever and creative way for the authors to draw the reader in.

 Programmed by Arahni, the soul of the shafra knife she uses, Sherice receives guidance, understanding and direction in whatever she does.

Things take a different turn when Darcie and Morgan discover each other again. Old feelings ignite and this Sherice will not tolerate. Obsessed with who she refers to as “My Morgan,” she will go to any lengths to have him join her on her bloody hunts.

 As Morgan becomes more entrenched in counseling, Darcie and Wes arrest some of the gangbangers, but her mind is definitely on getting Ice, even though she was told to let the FBI deal with her. Darcie will not give up, and the danger heightens, the body count rises and Sherice creeps closer.

Wes becomes more embroiled with Morgan, working with him to catch the gangbangers at any cost and any risk. Methods go awry and crossing the line is not out of the question as Morgan and Darcie’s world intersect.

Ice must find a way to rid the world of her competition, but not before satisfying her Hunger for a good kill. To what lengths will she go to get what she wants and who will be her next kill? Sherice’s next move will surprise the reader as she goes for the jugular. What happens next will take your breath away and keep you on edge until you turn that last page, read that last word and hope these two authors bring our main characters back for a sequel. Who survives, who dies, who is the ultimate winner?

Two outstanding authors created this diabolical character that shows no remorse when killing, enjoys and thrives on the blood baths and wants to possess, not only her guiding spirit, but Morgan too. Men or women, it does not make a difference to Ice. She wants control, and in her own mind her father’s approval which she never got.

 Murders so graphically described and expertly written you can feel the heat rising in the killer, her excitement as she slices her victims and the sense of release after committing the ultimate act of murder. No remorse, just a sense of satisfaction as she appeases her Hunger.  Will Morgan give in to Sherice and join her in her hunt? What happens will let the reader know the length one woman will go to, to own, posses and envelope one man into her body, her soul, fulfilling her Hunger and Passion for blood and death.

 Vividly created and fast paced with each chapter told in the voice of one character, we feel their frustrations, fears; understand their motives and desires with a cutting edge result. Who wins and who dies? Find out when you read this outstanding novel by two great authors? What is the final fate of Darcie and Morgan? Only this reviewer and the authors know.

 Fran Lewis: Reviewer

* * *

RED FLAG WARNING WINS COVETED ROYAL DRAGONFLY BOOK AWARD
CHANDLER, AZ (March 17, 2011) – The judges of the first annual Royal Dragonfly Book Awards contest, which recognizes excellence in literature, have spoken, and RED FLAG WARNING by Kurt Kamm, won First Place in the Mystery Category.

“Winning any place in the Royal Dragonfly Contest is a huge honor because in order to maintain the integrity of the Dragonfly Book Awards, a minimum score is required before a 1st or 2nd place or Honorable Mention will be awarded to the entrant – even if it is the sole entry in a category,” explains Linda Radke, president of Five Star Publications, the sponsor of the Dragonfly Book Awards. “Competition is steep, too, because there is no publication date limit as long as the book is still in print.”

RED FLAG WARNING is a serial arson mystery. It may be purchased at in paperback and e-book formats on Amazon and through the author's website (http://www.kurtkamm.com).

For a complete list of winners including all first and second place and honorable mention recipients, visit www.FiveStarBookAwards.com and click on “Winners.”
           
Red Flag has now won three First Place fiction awards.

* * *
Quintin Peterson worked for the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C. for an amazing 28 years. While with the police department, Quintin served as the liaison to the movie and TV industry. He consulted on dozens of films which were filmed in the District to ensure they portrayed the police accurately.

Even with his busy schedule he was able to pursue painting, film study and writing, and has even self-published several novels and a book of poetry. Some of Quintin’s short stories have been published in collections, including his story “Cold as Ice” which was included in the collection “DC Noir” edited by George Pelecanos.  A fascinating article on Quintin’s work with the police department, and his involvement in movies such as “The Pelican Brief” and “Minority Report” can be found here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/02/AR2008040201404.html

By the way, one of Quintin’s stories will be featured in a new anthology from Nightfall Publications:

From Shadows and Nightmares - Our third anthology explores the dark imaginations of our authors. From the traditional stories of zombies and werewolves, to haunted items that will surprise you, our new and established authors challenge you to read this book with only one light on.

Zombies, werewolves, mentally disturbed individuals and ghosts fill the pages of the newest anthology.

Available June 30, 2011. Pre-orders available at our store. http://nightfallpublications.com/Books_and_Authors.php

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