Trust but Verify

The year 2020 scrambled my brains and my life. I couldn’t tell Monday from Wednesday, up from down, or front to back. Like this collage, it seemed everything was jumbled. How about you/? Did you feel a pandemic onslaught interrupting your tried-and-true lifestyle and challenging your habits? Whichever way you turned, was there another obstacle? Mask or no mask; social distance or not; vaccinate or not; or simply stay home and say, “The heck with it.” For us, there was a bright side or two or three to this otherwise pandemic-scrambling year. Creativity flows in my blood, and that bears fruit in my novels, short stories, and screenplays. And, too, it bore fruit, or should I say meat, in my newfound culinary delight—cooking. While cooking took on a new joyful pastime, I also found creative fun in the presentation of meals. The entire process of dinner took on a whole new meaning—the fireplace dancing its orange and yellow flames, music flowing from the Bose, the chandelier dimmed, the ta...

  “These are the times that try men’s souls,” so said Thomas Paine in The American Crisis,” circa 1776. Now, we jump 244 years to another trying time, 2020, the year of the worldwide pandemic. But rather than “cry wolf,” or do a Chicken Little with “The sky is falling,” I opt to say “Change is not pleasant, but change is positive. Only when we change and grow, we’ll see a world we never know,” from the Wisdom of the Orange Woodpecker . And that is what we shall do – encounter change, grow, and be positive. Something I learned decades ago was to find a new world in books. Read. Then read some more. Whatever your genre of choice, a world awaits you in books. The genre in which I write is founded on my career in the criminal justice field. From the depths of street crime to the white-collar criminals found in the ivory towers, I worked and learned, always moving forward, and never bowing down to what could be perceived as a never-ending series of crooks and crimes. After a care...

  Yes, it’s that time of year—Halloween! It has been with us in one form or another since the time of the Celts. It was a festive time celebrating the end of summer, fields ready for the harvest, and the time when ghosts could cross the boundary between death and life. For us, though, Halloween 2020 is different…quite different. While the little ones may still have a subdued version of “Trick or Treat,” the adults are guiding their families on a trip without a roadmap—mask or no mask, how often do we have to sanitize our hands, go to the classroom or attend virtually, etc. Welcome to our road to perdition. The original road to perdition was like a Greek tragedy about quirks of fate and how they impacted people’s lives—or not! This year certainly has forced each of us to deal with our own version of a Greek tragedy, but the choices are ours to make. How we deal with a challenge can be an ordeal or an adventure. That is not to say 2020 has been a piece of cake. It hasn’t, but also...

Spend a day of simple relaxation with nothing on your mind. That is, nothing except it is raining havoc on your cotton crop, the pandemic is in full force, the fall flu season is here, and the election looms dead ahead. Relax? How about a soothing swim in a beautiful stream filled with piranha?        There can be no question this year has been a challenge for everyone and the forecast for the coming months does not bode well either. Will it be trying? Yes, indeed. Can we overcome it? Without a doubt. Our immediate and extended family coped with the 2020 challenges with calm and clearly thought-out planning and implementation. Six months ago, we never heard of PPE, Social Distancing, nor of not going out for a weekend dinner or ballgame with friends. All our plans for a family reunion in Arizona, a family wedding in Colorado, and a business trip to Oklahoma were dashed with one simple word, “COVID.” Nevertheless, two basic principles guided us ...

Pandemics, Deserts, and Linguistically Challenged Narrators A writer should be satisfied when their months of research and labor reaches the peak with the words, “I’m published.” I certainly had to join that elite crew with my most recent novel, “We Were Young Once …,” a fact-based novel of human and drug trafficking. But I must admit that reaching the “You are published” era was a two-edged sword. Indeed, I am happy beyond description but also frustrated that the road to publication can also be the road to perdition. Unbeknownst to any of us, that unseen enemy we call Covid-19 was not on the horizon when my manuscript was sent to the publisher, but it was. Like any other business we take for granted, the COVID quarantines and the new term we had to grow accustomed to, “PPE,” had an impact on the publishing world. Editors, business managers, clerical staff, art departments, etc. were all impacted. Accordingly, their business and mine slowed down. What we originally thought would be...

Up is Down; Crisscross is Backwards; and Bad is Good   We are living in a tumultuous time, maybe more than any of our ancestors ever envisioned in the United States. The textbooks list the eras in the USA as: Early America The Colonial Period Revolutionary America The Young Republic Expansion, Reform, and Turmoil Controversy, War, and Reconstruction Second Industrial Revolution Political Reform II War, Prosperity, and Depression The New Deal Postwar America Vietnam Era End of the Century; and, The New Millennium They were hard times and good times. Suddenly, the new millennium exploded in front of us. Some will say it started with the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Others will argue that his death was only the tipping point of something that has been brewing for decades if not centuries. This coming at the same time as the Covid-19 that has swept the world, and you and I find ourselves bombarded with the worst and best of humanity. It will be interesting for those who surv...

June Blog  Cover Reveal   Does your mind do a flip-flop when you hear certain words or phrases? June Blog? My brain did a quick backtrack to elementary school, a time when the June Bug provided hours of fun and games…the idea of which was to catch June Bugs and chase each other and shove the bugs down the back of the unlucky soul’s shirt. As the runt of the litter, I can attest to the scratchy feeling of an unhappy June Bug scampering about looking for an exit from a smelly hot t-shirt. Now many years later and beyond my June Bug days, I still enjoy traipsing around memory lane, but with books and movies. Some of the scenes or the spoken words are timeless: “Go ahead, make my day,” Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan in Sudden Impact in 1983. “Here’s Johnny,” Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance in The Shining in 1980. Montag, the fireman in Ray Bradbury’s 1951 novel Fahrenheit 451, racing the Salamander to douse a book owner’s home with kerosene and burn it down; ...

Corona or Not   We have been in quarantine for a month. There may be the twinkle of light ahead, and it isn’t a freight train barreling down on us. It’s the very slow beginning of the end which is still a long time and distance in the future. In the meantime, my wife, Gwen, and I remain fairly quarantined but certainly not prisoners in our house. Coronavirus or not, we have made adjustments to our ordinary lives and have reasonably settled into a quieter lifestyle. Among other things, it includes an ice-cold Corona and a few chips and dip to accompany it on a bright, sunny day in our courtyard or on the rear patio. In some ways, we have made good headway on our lifestyles: creative cooking with the Instapot; experimented with the Anova pan for meat, fish, and vegetables; and, we went overboard on the breakfast omelets which includes four eggs, boiled and chopped potatoes, green peppers, chopped red onions, mushrooms, and an unhealthy serving of shredded cheese. Served...

St. Patricks Day 2020 Style Happy St. Patrick’s Day – NOT .  This is likely to be the tamest St. Paddy's day in recent history with all of the social distancing we are asked to do. Speaking of history, St. Patrick was not really an Irishman. He was either from Wales or Scotland, but why let a touch of truth mar an otherwise good reason to have a pint or sip a bit of Irish whiskey? Nevertheless, March 17 th has been recognized as an Irish holiday since 1903. Many of our major cities in the USA have hosted parades, dances, and a corn beef sandwich on rye to celebrate the history of the good Saint Patrick. But, from wherever you live, American society has either accepted the revelry or at least turned a blind eye to the raucous behavior that goes hand-in-hand with the wild celebrations. From a cop’s point-of-view having worked more than one evening or midnight patrol shift on St. Patrick’s Day, I almost always found the partygoers to be of good cheer, loud bu...

In 2020, I am Eyeing The Russian In children’s games, we began by shouting, “Ready or not, here I come.” Times have changed, but the outcry is still appropriate for the new decade. Ready or not, it is here and I’m ready. Ready to create, to write, and to make the most of every day. It reminds me of a comment a critically ill man made when asked by a friend how he was doing. His answer was spot on. “I enjoyed my sandwich at lunch.” Such a little thing, but how accurate. It’s the little things that count. Another way of saying it is to enjoy the journey, not just wait to reach the final terminal of wherever we are going. Enjoy the journey! My journey as we start this new era is to make the most of each day as we construct my series of novels, the “Border Wars.” The series began with Color of the Prism , a fact-based novel set on the Arizona/Sonora border. Tarantino Productions purchased the movie rights but never put together the fifty-million budget to complete the film. Below i...

Haunted by the Past: The Forty Year Cold Case Read more about the case here. Some people don’t get a fair shot at life. I met Donna Marie Smith a couple days after her twentieth birthday. She was dead. That was in 1976. She had been murdered in her own home. Looking back after all these years, I never thought I would have further involvement in her case. I was wrong. Even though I retired as Deputy Chief of the Tucson Police Department in 1983, I was jarred back in time with a phone call in 2016. It was a call from Investigator Calvin Fuller from the Pima County Attorney’s Office. As soon as he said his name, I knew exactly who he was. He worked as an undercover narcotics officer when I was a Lieutenant with the Metropolitan Area Narcotics Squad. I had to chuckle when I heard his voice. “Lalee?” I asked. He was taken aback. “How could you remember my nickname?” he replied. I laughed again. “Because you were one-of-a-kind.” That was when he cau...