Where we’re at in The Lawman stories-

“Great works of art are never finished. They’re simple abandoned,” Leonardo Da Vinci.

That’s one of my favorite quotes from the master and I suspect there’s a lot of truth to it. Maybe that’s one reason we see so many layers in the old paintings when they’re x-rayed. They did something, hated it, and then covered it with new paint.

And so it is with writing. As an indie author, I often produce something, like it, and then on the second reading of it, hate it. Sometimes it’s a simple typo. Sometimes it’s a whole chapter that either doesn’t belong or there’s a need to add one.

My first crack at indie publication is a good example. When I first wrote The Lawman six plus years ago the result was a book pushing over 800 pages. While some Tom Clancy’s novels have gone that big, that’s no excuse. I’m not Clancy.

Then I read it.

I hated it.

Now, here’s a lesson and a warning about writing something. If you hate it, everyone else will. The initial shot at it was loaded with typos. Character development stank and it was about as entertaining as watching paint dry. That’s not to say it didn’t have its moments, but I was disappointed and embarrassed.

I hadn’t published a novel. What I’d published was a rough draft.

So, I pulled it. I cleaned up misspells and put out a contract on the comma. I added this, took away that, and broke it down into several books. I’m sure that confused a few people, but let’s be honest here. This is a literary work and not the Bible. Changing, deleting, and adding stuff is allowed.

It’s funny, but I’ve ran into writers who agonize over deleting a word, much less dump chapters or add new ones. And when an editor tells them this doesn’t work, they get offended. Whatever you write has to add to the story. Words in and by themselves don’t tell the story and can get in the way. One of the many things I had to look at was I using three words where one would work better.

And a lesson I learned from another master (Hemingway) is “ly” ending words should almost never be used. You can often delete them, and the sentence won’t suffer a bit. This was a hard lesson to learn. I’ve a background in jobs (translation – jobs that were political in nature) and we often used “ly” words to help cover our butts. That’s a hard habit to break so I’m always looking for them. When I note one, I have to ask does it add to the story (sometimes it does) or does it just add a word that doesn’t need to be there.

After a year’s worth of work, the end results were something I’m happy with. Now that not to say that if I spot a mistake in spelling or grammar that I might rush out and fix it. But they’re pretty much in their final form.

While each book is more or less a standalone, together, they form a whole.

But there are some cases weaved through them that aren’t concluded until later in the series. The reason is that the police work I show is rooted in the real world. On TV, you have super smart detectives or police who get a complex case and have it solved before the closing credits. In the real world, some cases fall right into place. Others might take weeks, months, even years to solve. Or they may never be solved.

And the typical detective almost never has a single case to focus on. My normal week as a detective would have a dozen or more a day on my desk. Of that number, only a few would still be open at the end of the week. There are a million things that can send your day off in a different direction. I try to reflect that in my books.

An example is a case weaved through the first five books of the series and that’s the Brightman Case. It’s referenced throughout the novels and will finally be closed in Internal affairs. Roughly two years (book time) will pass before RJ stamps case closed on it. By itself, it would be a major case. But there’s a lot of things that mitigate against it being closed soon. The biggest problem is (in book one) we don’t even know we have a crime yet. There’s no body to be found since it was thought he’d left his camp in the mountains and tried to walk out in a blizzard, got lost and died. It isn’t until book three, Broken People, that we find the body. Only then do we realize it was homicide. That means trying to ID the body (despite circumstantial evidence saying it is the missing man) and waiting on crime lab results (Most labs are backed up till doomsday and you’re lucky if you get results within a month or two). This has become a criminal case and every “i” needs to be dotted and “t” crossed or a murderer goes free.

In the meantime, a lot of stuff happens. Some of it is people just going through what people go through. Very little of that is Law Enforcement related, but it is related to life. An example would be the Sheriff facing a terminal diagnosis of cancer and Will facing having to take over the Department.

There’s a couple of running jokes through the books. One is the number “42.” Fans of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy know it’s the answer to a question that took so long to answer, the question was forgotten. Often times it gets Will or RJ a look.

Another is a bow to the Blues Brothers. When anyone asks Jewell what kind of music her band plays, she almost always answers, “We play both kinds. Country and Western.”

The final joke isn’t really a joke but is often times associated with some big and uncertain event about to go down. It’s used to ease the tension (sometimes it works). Will refers to it as “The Shepards prayer.” You’ll never find it in the Bible or a hymnal, but it’s one of his (and mine) favorites. Those around him know he’s a Christian and that he prays a lot. So, when something tough is about to happen, they might ask him if he’s prayed about it, he may employ it. Here’s some conversation found in Event Horizon.

     “You better be praying about this!” Jonesy said.

     “I’m saying the Shepard’s prayer,” I answered with a forced smile.

     Jonesy shook his head and said, “I’m Southern Baptist. I don’t know that one.”

    “It goes, ‘Please God, don’t let me screw this up.’ ”

    “Amen.”

That prayer goes back to Cmdr. Alan Shepard sitting on top of a rocket and waiting to become the first American in space. Al’s prayer had a word in it we won’t got into, but Will’s version of the prayer is found at least once in every book.

THE BOOKS-

-THE LAWMAN: The Cross and the Badge

Book one of the Lawman series is The Cross and the Badge. Like all things, this book went through an evolutionary process to arrive in the form it’s in today. There was a lot of cleanup in it.

The final rewrite added an extended Iraq section. We get to see Will, Max, Jonesy and Terri in a military setting. And we get to meet Will’s cousin, Nathan. He will play a huge part in the series conclusion (three or four books down the line – maybe more).

We also see Will return to the San Luis Valley and finding himself in a custody battle for his son. He meets Jewell and their relationship begins. And of course, he becomes a detective only to find that he’s wearing several hats.

One thing I’ve begun doing is a short blurb that describes the essence of each book. In this case, Will discovers “Home ain’t home anymore.” He has returned to a world just familiar enough to be home, but just alien enough to be another world.

I did toss out a chapter. There was nothing wrong with it, it just slowed things down and didn’t contribute much to the overall story. But I think it was Robert Heinlein who said, “Never throw anything away.” The chapter will become a cornerstone operation in book five titled Internal Affairs.

Buy Cross and the Badge HERE.

-LIFE ON MARS

The biggest change to this book was the name. Originally called “Against flesh and Blood,” I always thought it just a little too Tom Clancy despite being taken from The Book of Ephesians in the New Testament. Instead, I opted to change the title to reflect how Will feels about his new life. In a section where he’s talking with his pastor, he reflects that he feels like he’s living in that Ray Bradbury story where astronauts land on Mars, pop the hatch, and there’s their hometown waiting for them. Hence the name change to “Life on Mars.”

It expresses a feeling a number of vets express of “not belonging.” It’s all about having been a square peg in square hole, and having been changed into a round peg by the experiences one goes through. The problem is everyone else seems to make you want to fit into the holde for the square peg. they don’t realize you changed.

But if this is Mars Will found himself on, then he’s adapting to it. He’s learning not to fight against it, but to enjoy the journey.

There were some changes that happened along the way between The Cross and the Badge and Life on Mars, Will and Jewell got married. We don’t see the ceremony, it’s simply stated. This is also the first time we actually encounter Zorro.

Max has returned from wherever he went (Will doesn’t ask. Something he should have done), and life has gone on.

But the main case remains the same, the sexual assault at gunpoint of a police officer’s daughter.

The blurb to describes the story is one we all got as kids. “Mom always said never to take rides from strangers.”

Buy it HERE.

-BROKEN PEOPLE

The third novel, “Broken People” was the book that was never supposed to have happened. It evolved completely on its own. Two years ago, it began as the first half of what is now book four, Event Horizon. The book was well on its way to becoming one of those Tom Clancy length books. And while editing it, one small line changed everything. In the book, Pam Harmon, a member of Will’s SWAT team is wounded. And rather than stop and ask what that does to a person, I glossed it over by saying “She’s in counseling.”

I have to admit, it was cowardly on my part. Writing, especially the kind I do, is therapeutic. I was taking something tough and dancing around it. Having been injured in the line of duty a few times, I’ve an idea what that does to a person. It totally messes you up. And maybe that why I hated the line and no matter how many times I tried to fix it, I still hated it. it was because I was avoiding what had happened to me.

I’ve always felt that writers block is simply trying to force the story in a direction it didn’t want to go. If a book is a donkey, then mine had refused to be led, pushed, begged, or threatened. It had sat down in the trail and refused to budge. Nothing will get it to move unless you do what it wants to do.

If I was one of those guys who makes an outline and sticks to it, I’d have just left that single line and moved on. And I would have hated the book because of the line. And so would my readers. They’d have wanted to know what she was going through. And some would suspect I’d coped out of facing something. There was a whole other story to be told, and I wasn’t telling it.

But the type of writer I am came to my rescue. I’m what they call in the writing world, a pantster. The term means someone who writes a book and there might be detours and side trips along the way. Pantsters follow the trail of a story and throw the map away. We know what the starting point looks like. And we know (more or less) where we want to end up. It’s the journey in between that gets interesting. Broken People took me down so many rabbit holes that I was beginning to wonder where it would emerge. It veered into the world of PTSD, alcohol abuse, fear, hidden pasts, even suicide.

And it emerged with the redemption of one of my central characters.

The blurb that describes this book would be “What do you do when the world comes to an end, and you’re left to deal with it.”

Buy it HERE.

-EVENT HORIZON

The next novel will be out around Christmas 2024 is Event Horizon. It will feature huge character growth for everyone involved and fair number have new job titles when said and done. The ending will signal the start of a new series of adventures. That’s not to say the past doesn’t influence what happens. If anything, this and other three books set the foundation for the next several books.

One thing I’ve never done in any of my books is to include maps. Truth was, I didn’t know how. But since Conejos County and the San Luis Valley exist, I don’t have to go out and create something like we might find in Lord of the Rings or Narnia. I can use good old fashioned USGS maps. Now here’s something to know for perspective writers. USGS maps are public domain. What does that mean? It means you can reference and use them as long as you give credit. Maps like those from Google Earth and etc. are subject to copyright and can be used AFTER paying a fee and getting permission.

As a matter of interest, I had to send for the newer maps (they weren’t available for download). However, there was one from the 1920s that I could download. I used it to figure out distances and timing (how far you could ride a horse in X amount of time and etc).

The age of the map is a time capsule of the attitudes of the time. There’s a mountain where part of the story takes place called “Black Mountain.” I’d never thought much about where it got its name beyond the mountain is dark colored. I was shocked to see that in the 1920s version of the map, the mountain had a different name. A very derogatory name for a people who make up a large part of our nation’s population. Near as I can figure, and I haven’t confirmed this, the first Spanish settlers called it “Negro (pronounced Neg-Row – Spanish for the color black) mountain.” Along comes some slap happy guy who thinks Negro is talking about people of color and gave the mountain the derogatory name.

I’d have objected, too! I was thinking about it after I saw the name and I seem to recall some of the old-timers referred to that mountain by that derogatory name. Sorry, they didn’t know better.

While that map was good for figuring things out on, I’ll be using the newer map in the book.

The blurb for this book is “Not everyone lives happily ever after.”

Coming December 2024.

ON THE HORIZON

-INTERNAL AFFAIRS

Without giving away too much (it’s still in construction and while I know where the beginning and end is, a lot happens between the two. As mystery’s go, this is one of those cases that falls in place and is solved within a day. It’s the impact it has on everyone around that makes the story. The blurb that describes it best is “The Bible says, ‘Thou shall not got tap dancing in a minefield.’ What happens if you do?!”