Sample Chapter

For those of you interested, here's a sample chapter of my newest book, a sequel to Sleepless Murder, currently untitled.

I went straight from the therapist’s office to the autopsy lab. Doc Werner was sitting at his desk; thick glasses perched on the end of his nose. His hair, normally parted carefully and combed over his rapidly expanding bald spot, was instead combed straight down, exposing his scalp like a strange egg in its nest.

“Werner?”

He looked up. “It’s about time, Davies! Come on, get in here!”

“Jeez, Werner, what’s the problem?”

He closed the door behind me and stalked over to the refrigerated doors which held the bodies whose cases were still under investigation. Werner popped the catch on one and pulled out the tray.

“Aida Deorwine, maiden name Reem, aka Braidy. DNA and fingerprints proved it’s her.”

Aida Braidy was fifty five at the time of her death, but might have looked at least ten years younger. Her brown hair was long enough to brush her shoulders and framed her face in an appealing way. Her features were well defined; she would have made a striking figure in life. In death, now that Werner had washed the blood from her, I was able to see the brutality that had been exacted on her; I counted at least five stab wounds, or maybe they were just cuts, on her upper body alone. Her skin, specifically her breasts, arms and stomach, was burned black, and several chunks appeared to be missing.

“She was cut dozens of times,” Werner said, reading my mind. “And stabbed at least as many by a large bladed weapon; my money’s on hunting knife, but I can’t know for sure until you bring me something to try and match.”

“Any way to tell which was the fatal blow?”

Werner shook his head. “Too many of the stab wounds would have been fatal in and of themselves to be certain.”

“Jesus.”

“It gets better,” Werner said and turned to another drawer. “Obviously she had a blowtorch used on her.”

“Sure about it being a torch?”

“Well since we didn’t find her in the oven, I would say yes. There were also traces of burned fuel on her skin, propane, to be exact. See the missing chunks?”

I swallowed hard, afraid of what he was about to say. “Yes. Are they what I think they are?”

“Bite marks. The sick bastards were eating her. I hope to God she was already dead while they were doing it.”

I shuddered.

“But wait, there’s more, detective.” He turned to another drawer, opened it, and pulled another body out.

“This is the woman we assumed at the crime scene was Ashlea, Aida’s daughter.”

His words took a moment to soak in. “Wait, what do you mean ‘assumed’?”

“Exactly what you think, Detective. DNA and fingerprints came back on this one, labeling her as Viviana Yursa. Her name came up on the missing persons database. She’s been missing for five years now. How did she turn up suddenly at the Braidy’s house, dead and posed as Ashlea?”

“That’s a damn good question, Werner. I see it and raise you this one: If Ashlea Braidy wasn’t killed with her mother, where the hell is she?”

“I do know one thing about her, detective. She was dead after Aida.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. She took part in the torture of Aida and...Well, let’s just say her stomach contents confirm that suspicion.”

NaNoWriMo 2015 Update

Greetings from the halfway point of National Novel Writing Month. As I write this, I just validated my word count at a little over 25,000 words.

This year has been a bit of a nightmare, especially compared to last year. Let me break it down a bit for you:

Last year, I was loaded for bear. I came into the competition with a clear idea of what I was going to write about. I even had an outline, which is something I've never done. I'm usually a seat of the pants kind of writer, just going with whatever strikes me, but I learned about NaNo from the October issue of Writer's Digest, and I wanted to be as prepared as possible.

The end result was that the story seemed to write itself, up until I wrote "The End", which came about 10,000 words too early. And so I had to start editing and expanding with about a week and a half left in the competition. This can't be unusual. Hell, I'd never written 50,000 words in one shot ever, so I didn't know what 50,000 words even looked like. But I made it; on November 23, 2014, I rolled over 50k and took the prize in my very first NaNoWriMo.

That story became Sleepless Murder, which, although it's currently available on Amazon.com, I am still in the process of revising. I'm not making any major changes, I just want to get it more in line with the sequel. I could just make the sequel more in line with the first one, but these are changes I wanted to make from the beginning; to be honest, the book was only published to make the deadline so I could claim one of the prizes.

But I digress, I was talking about why this NaNo has been a trial.

This year I decided to keep to my roots and go seat of the pants. I also started the book making the assumption that a change I was going to make to Sleepless was the right thing to do.

*Warning* The rest of this post will contain spoilers about Sleepless Murder and possibly its sequel. If you're at all interested in reading these books and do not wish to have anything spoiled for you, please stop reading.

Sleepless Murder follows a former hacker named Kaleb Davies. He's a homicide detective who spends his days off helping  people reclaim stolen identities. When one of his clients is murdered Kaleb finds himself hunting a killer with no type, no motive and no consistent MO. Without realizing it, Kaleb confronts the killer and leads him to Chloe and Liam, Kaleb's girlfriend and nephew. The two are kidnapped by the killer and Kaleb is forced to fall back on his hacking skills in order to find them.

One of the changes I wanted to make to SM was at the end; I wanted Kaleb to quit the police force and go out on his own as a private investigator, specializing in cyber crime.

I came into the sequel expecting this change to be in effect and I forced it for about 10,000 words. Then, at the end of the first week, I hit a block. Hard. The kind of block that I've only ever read about in writing books.

It was then that I took a hard look at the differences in the stories. Obviously the plot was different; there was no way around that, but I believed in the plot line. I knew it could work. The characters were pretty much the same; Kaleb was the narrator, Josh (his brother), Liam (nephew) and Chloe (his girlfriend) all made appearances, as did his former partner, so I knew it wasn't the characters blocking me. So I knew that it had to be the one major difference: Kaleb's occupation.

I don't know why, but having Kaleb as a PI did not work in the least. And so, at the beginning of Week 2, I started over, once again making Kaleb into a homicide detective.

And the story took off, writing itself just like its predecessor. I once again have the feeling that I'd rather be working on my own story instead of reading other people's stories when I'm on lunch at work.

So that's been NaNoWriMo for me this year; a complete restart one week in was a major speed bump, but it's been for the best. I can't wait to get back to revising Sleepless Murder and get to revising and titling this story.