Taking a Hard Write

I’ve been working hard at writing a series of short stories over the past eighteen months or so. The tales are detective stories. One of the detectives is a blonde private eye named Mary Alice Brandon. I have written one tale about her solving a murder after being hired to follow a husband for a woman who thought that he was cheating. I am in the middle of another tale for her as well. I am hung up on the ending, but as long as I can find one I will be happy.

My second “detective” is a reluctant one. His name is Luigi Garibaldi and has been a gambler scared from the major casinos because of a dalliance with an owner’s wife. He has clues fall into his lap and he has to follow up to help solve the crimes. Two of the crimes he solves are murders and the other is the assault and thefts of religious items.

The last detective is a retired Pittsburgh cop who has cases dumped in his lap by friends and relatives. He is helped by his muse Adrian Monk who has certain ways to pass on clues and give support to Tommy Two Shoes. Tommy Two Shoes is his nickname. Because he was a cop, he doesn’t investigate murders or cases that normally involve the police unless he is directly involved like in “Coin Operated” and “Crime Hits Home.” In "Coin Operated" a neighbor suffers a break-in and Tommy is there to assist her and finds clues that eventually solves the crime.

The introduction to Tommy is his first venture into writing mysteries when he attends a retreat for mystery writers. The story “A Soft Spot for Redheads” occurs as he makes friends with a coppery haired café owner and decides to help her parents solve an ongoing problem at their trailer park in Florida. The follow up to that tale is “Crime Hits Home” and is an attempted robbery of that henna haired beauty while Tommy is in the café and he is assaulted. He works this case because of the feeling that he’d been insulted as a man and a cop. The coppery haired woman makes a request when her boyfriend is missing and the police are unwilling to investigate when he had been missing for such a short time. “The Burden of Love” causes Tommy to look for the waylaid boyfriend, solve another crime, and find a woman more his own age to date.

The last two are more of a personal nature and revolve round family matters. “Missing” is a story where Tommy tries to solve the mysterious disappearance of a younger brother that happened fifty years prior. The last story “More or Les” causes Tommy to look for a Les Paul guitar that had been stolen from his nephew.

I have a woman who is reviewing them to publish as a series in a book. She is doing the proof reading and will help with the publication. This is one reason that I had to cut back my blog writing from every day to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.