Trust but Verify

  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...

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...

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...

The Secret Recipe to Creating a Great Book Cooking and writing have much in common—more than you might think. Take a moment to think back to some special place you went for dinner. Better yet, think of all those meals your mom prepared for your dinner. At some point ahead of time, be it an hour or even days earlier, she had to make a decision on what she would fix, how much, and how many people would be there to eat. Would it be the immediate family, or would there be a friend or two? Or maybe even some relatives from out-of-town. Her decision would first focus on her audience (who she would be feeding), what they would like, the cost of buying the main course and the side dishes to go with it, what her preparation time would be, and did she really want to do it or not? Was she ready to commit? Once her decisions were made, off she would go to the store to make her purchases, get home and schedule what went on the stove or in the oven, prepare her pots and pans, prep...

Why Do I Write? A Conversation with Myself Thomas J. Nichols, Award Winning Author and Former Chief of Police After being a cop for 50 years and suddenly becoming an award-winning author, two questions arise persistently. Why do you write, and how do you write? My responses are simple yet complex: like writing a straight line with crooked letters. Let’s take the first part—why do you write? I write for the joy of writing and the pleasure of telling a story. “Wait a minute,” you reply. “That’s just saying the same thing twice.” “Nope,” I retort. If we were here together I would show you, but you aren’t here so just follow along. At this point I would hold up my favorite 1921 Silver Dollar—Lady Liberty on one side, and the American Eagle on the other. The two sides are separate but equal—without either side, there would not be a complete coin, and so it is with the joy of writing and the pleasure of telling a story. I find tremendous joy in creating a...