Approaching the Finish Line

The end of the book is nearing. I have been working feverishly with my editor to review and prepare my last set of stories for publication. It is another collection of tales written from the viewpoint of the retired Pittsburgh homicide detective and past cases that he and his partner solved around the Christmas holidays. It will be titled The Twelve Murders of Christmas.

The theme of Christmas stories came from the first tale that I wrote. Tommy and his wife, Cora are older and never had children. The prospect of ever having children, shy of a miracle, was poor. They were awakened by an odd sound and found an abandoned baby on their porch. It was a long journey, but Tommy and Cora decided to try to adopt the baby. That is where the story’s name was realized and the decision to write the rest of the book with murders that occurred between Thanksgiving and the New Year celebrations. The name of the tale is What Child is This? All of the following titles have names like Jingle Belles, Murder Under the Mistletoe, and Grandma Got Run Over…

There are a total of thirteen stories, twelve of which are the murders that he and his old partner Duffy solved. The crimes occurred around the holidays over their years of working together and the tales describe the clues that they followed to find the motive for the deaths and names of the murderers.

I am still struggling on the dedication. I have already named my parents, my children, and my editor. I am very much tempted to dedicate this new book to all of my teachers and not just to my English teachers, but to all, from kindergarten through my years of college.

I do want to relay an amusing story that occurred last week. I went inside of my local bank. One of the employees asked about new book. I thought that she was talking about this new release. When I started to describe it, she said, “Not that book, what happened to Tommy’s brother?”

 I sold my first book to them. In it, Tommy’s younger brother was abducted from their home. It wasn’t purposefully written that way, but apparently they wanted to know the answer. While I was writing my second book, Tommy addressed and solved the disappearance, nearly fifty years later. Their prodding caused me to write the ending to the kidnapping. I hadn’t mentioned that book was published and now they wanted it. The teller said the entire bank enjoyed, read my book, and passed it on to another bank. I said that I had the sequel in my car. They bought it, immediately.