My protagonist in “A Deadly Game” in the May/June issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Oklahoma Senior Police Officer Aaron Clement, is a guy I’m fond of. He derives from my police procedural, Dry Bones, published in May 2024 by Down & Out Books. (Coming in May 2025 from Down and Out is my Florida suspense thriller Political Alliances headed up by gardening journalist Mara Wayne whose grandmother dies unexpectedly—and even more unexpectedly leaves the family avocado ranch in the South Florida Redlands to a strange religious group, the Children of Jordan.)
But trust me, I’m a short storyist at heart and won a short story Edgar in 2004 for “The Maids” in a Mystery Writers of American anthology. This isn’t my first appearance in AHMM, either, as Ghana-born Harlem resident Miriam Obadah did some crime-stopping in these pages several years ago. I’m published in a few MWA anthologies as well, with a story most recently in Crime Hits Home, edited by S. J. Rozan. You’ll also find other shorts of mine out and about, notably in a few set in the Adirondacks.
I have more of my shorts to mention here, too, in Pacific Empire, lauded by The New York Times when the alternate history linked short story novel came out, and then the novel appeared on the NYTimes summer reading list.
Where did my knowledge of crime come from? In my stint as a business journalist, I wrote a monthly newsletter about company security and enjoyed listening to talks on a range of corporate security issues and approaches to handling them, from executive protection, to processing incoming mail, to dealing with employee theft—and lots more. I was able to attend top level symposiums in New York, Washington D.C., and Chicago—fun for me.
I like to write about very good people, and to make that stand out I need very bad people to oppose them. My protagonists are smart, too, but that doesn’t make my antagonists stupid. Morally stupid, perhaps, but they give the good guys a real run for their money.
In the past year or so I had a series out (Rebirth), which I might call something from literary to paranormal to martial arts: Rescued, Re-Live, and Respiration. The cycle starts with the stepmother’s attempt to starve genius child Jay (not to worry) and his rescue and transformation, with Re-Live focusing on Jay’s student Steven, and Respiration showing Jay tangling with the Yakuza at his Japanese mountain retreat (where he attempts to whip his Heavenly clan into shape). Lots of action.
What else I do is teach at Writer’s Digest’s Online Workshops and perform pre-publication edits for people. Look for my instructionals at Amazon: Writing the Mystery: A Start to Finish Guide and The Naked Writer: A Comprehensive Writing Style Guide. I post on Facebook at a personal site and an author’s site. Say hello after you read the AHMM issue.
Trace Evidence 