Projects and Obsessions

I’m currently working on three writing projects. Simultaneously.

The first one started just before the Presidential elections in 2008 that has turned into a still-forming novel. Yes, that’s right, eight years ago. That’s a long time on any author’s time card, let alone a fledgling such as myself. I only have a few chapters to complete; the problems, however, are many. Too many moving parts. Too many characters, but each one needed to be able to tell the tale in its entirety. Complexity can be a bad thing in a case such as this because you have to keep going back to check sections of storyline in order to maintain flow and pace.

 That work is already 80,000 words and rising; the scary thing is that, in the book, there have been events I’ve put on paper in this fictional story that run surprisingly close to actual incidents that have occurred since the book’s inception.

The idea for the storyline came to me during a dream one night, and my wife will tell you that I’ve had some pretty wild ones. This dream in particular, though, was so real, so substantive, that I got out of bed and started jotting it down so that I wouldn’t forget. Jotting turned into typing…and it is ongoing even today. It has become a labor-intensive endeavor, one that I must self-motivate for in order to work on it. It is my personal Frankenstein; a baby I’ve worked on that has grown into a monster. That baby’s working title is ‘Siege of the Holy City’…and no, that city is not The Vatican.

The second fictional project I started two months ago and it has nothing to do with law enforcement, although I’m toying with the idea of using one or two characters from the novel in bit parts of this story, since the location/setting I’m using is one which is central in the book.

The working title is ‘Diver Down’, and it will be a series of stories developed from a fictional piece I wrote last year that I entered in a writing contest…and won.

The issue I’ve encountered is that, in order to be factually-correct concerning the main character’s occupation, I need to speak at length with a former diver in the U.S. Navy. I’ve sent emails to the Navy’s PR liaison office, reached out to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and AMVETS, both through their state and national offices, and gotten nowhere. Today I am calling the Navy’s main Diver Training Center to ask if they have resources available that could put me in contact with a former diver because, without their assistance, I can’t complete this project. It’s a shot in the dark but I’m running out of ideas; I won’t finish it if I can’t be factual, plain and simple.

The third? It’s much easier, because it is a collection of stories and events I’d experienced during thirty-one years behind a badge; a non-fiction work whose authenticity will be questioned by some.

 The one central question that will be posed after people have read the book will be this: “Did that really happen?”

The answer will always be the same: Yes it did.

It will cover events ranging from the shooting of a fellow police officer in 1981 to my retirement in 2013; it will be shocking, sorrowful, hair-raising and sometimes downright hilarious. It will be, above all, emotional.

It already has been for me. The writing of some of the events has brought back long-forgotten facts and the people involved in them. I’ve made phone calls, researched records, sent and received emails and re-read old newspaper stories. I’ve been contacted by old friends I’d lost touch with decades ago after they’d heard what I was working on, guys that, during my formative years in cop-world, were idols to me, role models that made me the police officer I became.

It will be politically incorrect; you have to remember that, during the late 70s, the world was a different place. Things that happened back then absolutely would not be tolerated in today’s media-driven-cameras-everywhere law enforcement environment. Some names will be mentioned, most won’t. Some parts of stories will be changed to protect identities but the main theme will not. It is becoming the obsession that ‘Siege’ initially was.

…only this time, I’m not stopping until it is completed…

…which is why I arose and started writing at 0230 this morning, the soundtrack from HBO’s ‘The Pacific’ miniseries playing in my headphones while the rest of the house sleeps peacefully.

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, ‘The Hanging Man’ in 1982…