About Me

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I received teaching and engineering degrees and have traveled extensively, living ten years outside the US. I moved from the big city of Houston to a small sleepy community in North Carolina, which has been a tremendous change and a great inspiration for my novels, full of the local color. My time has been filled with writing and helping to physically construct three additions to our former farmhouse. I have a great view of the mountains ten miles away across the broad valley and the sunsets are breathtaking. I am an avid reader of all kinds of mystery and contemporary fiction.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Reality or Fiction?


Reality or Fiction?

My writing has slowed a little this month in favor of my Investigative Principles course. However, I am learning procedures the police use in their investigations that will help in the writing of my Rachel Christie series.

The fine points of collecting evidence and the procedures to get that evidence is a lot stricter than one is led to believe when watching television or reading novels themselves. A lot of it is just downright boring and time consuming. I guess that figures since most jobs have their boring elements.

In conjunction with my course, I read a true crime account of a falsely accused man who spent eleven years in jail until DNA evidence freed him. It was an emotional account and gave the viewpoints of both the wrongly convicted man and the victim. Eyewitness is not always reliable. Our memories do not work like cameras. We cannot recall all the subtle details a month or, as in this book I read, three years from the crime.

Although I wish to get back to writing, I feel that the application of the principles learned in this class will make my books more believable to the reader. Since I haven't taken a course in a while, maybe after a few weeks things will settle down and my writing will once again take center stage. I'm glad I finished "Murder Along the Blue Ridge" before the semester began.

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