By CJ Verburg
March 23, 2018
I knew exactly what I wanted to write. My life plan revealed itself in college, where I devoured Agatha Christie and Mary Stewart novels between Tolstoy, Joyce, and Woolf. I would travel to exotic places and write a romantic mystery in each one.
The pesky need to earn a living steered me into publishing, but I soon jumped off the career ladder. Moving into a waterfront mansion in Marblehead, I fell in love with one of my 7 housemates, a woodworker who was rebuilding a derelict yacht. Every morning I sat overlooking the harbor and wrote; every afternoon I hopped on my bike and pedaled 3 miles to the Salem boatyard. My lover’s life plan was to sail around the world, winding up in the Caribbean with a charter business.
I’d learned from Melville what can happen to a sea captain who’s gripped by an obsession. As months became years, as my lover’s funds and charms dwindled while his ship stayed in drydock, I moved to Cambridge to stir things up again.
The agent who’d embraced my Marblehead manuscript brought back grim news. A “bodice-ripper” boom had bulldozed the romantic suspense market. Not even Mary Stewart’s publisher wanted the kind of book I’d planned to spend my life writing. The heroine couldn’t be a smart accidental sleuth who joins forces with an enigmatic stranger. She must be ravished by a handsome scoundrel, thereby launching his transformation into a hero. Or she can have occult powers. Or (preferably) both.
What to do? I’d bought a plane ticket to Paris. I’d outlined the novel I wanted to write there. Back to Square One?
Maybe not. This was the heyday of rock music. If I pushed my plot toward whodunit and threw in a band, would that light enough fireworks to satisfy a publisher? Worth a try. I spent a week in a French village, celebrating their annual strawberry festival. Real fireworks! Perfect!
Back home, I conjured up a narrator: Boston journalist Cory Goodwin, a NY private eye’s daughter, assigned to cover an American band in France. It was ages, though, since I’d hung out with rock musicians. Research break! I told friends I was looking for a band to let me sit in on a rehearsal, to catch up on how they spoke, dressed, and so forth.
One friend knew a keyboard player. I called him, slightly nervous. It was OK: he didn’t sound drugged or deranged. Sure, I could come observe, only they weren’t rehearsing. They were playing clubs all over New England. Did I want to join them?
No way. Travel with five male strangers? Hang out every night in a different bar? Unthinkable.
“Isn’t that what your book is about?” he asked. “A writer who follows a band on tour?”
Well, yes (gulp), but…
I tossed my skis in my car, so this trip wouldn’t be a total bust. No problem. I learned so much about music, musicians, the entertainment business, and life, and I had so much fun, that I didn’t end my odyssey after the first leg. I sailed on with my 5 new friends (6, counting the sound man) into much more than a musical mystery novel called Another Number for the Road. Coming home I hit a killer blizzard which became Scene One of my next Cory Goodwin mystery, Silent Night Violent Night.
Writing of course requires applying butt to chair and eyes to screen. But a central reason WHY I write — and why I chose to write mysteries — is the adventure. I can’t know which of my books will click with any given reader, or with the ever-changing publishing industry. I do know that anytime “write what you know” hits a dead end, I’d rather expand what I know than shrink what I write. Shake it up, baby!
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Award-winning playwright and director CJ Verburg has published two Cory Goodwin mysteries and two Edgar Rowdey Cape Cod mysteries, Croaked and Zapped (so far), plus the multimedia memoir Edward Gorey On Stage and several international literature collections. A Sisters In Crime member, CJ is juggling Book 3 in each series with editing San Francisco’s quarterly Semaphore. website: cjverburg.net
Working a radio car, we answered a 211 (armed robbery) that had just occurred.
Two male suspects entered the gas station in separate vehicles and asked to use the vise in the closed garage area. They proceeded to hacksaw off the barrel of a .12-gauge shotgun in the garage, then used the gun to hold up the attendant. 
NB had obtained an antique .32 caliber revolver, either a Harrington and Richardson or an Iver Johnson. This revolver was a “break open” model and in order to load it, the barrel and the cylinder needed to be tilted forward. A small nut and bolt assembly served as the “hinge pin.” This particular revolver, however, was missing this nut and bolt assembly and in its place was a bent nail. When NB had selected his victim, he produced this weapon, and somewhere between “stick ‘em up” and “oh s**t,” the nail fell out. Now, logic tells us that the fallen nail was followed by the barrel, followed by the cylinder, followed by all 5 rounds, leaving our hapless NB holding a gun butt with only a trigger and a hammer attached to what used to be a revolver. The victim then produced his own weapon and shot NB in the foot from about 8 feet away, a point-blank shot. After units went on scene, all they had to do was follow the blood drops to NB’s hiding spot that was located several blocks away in a bush. 
Stir Things Up by Paty Jager
Artful Murder
At about 9:45 I noticed two gangster-looking males sitting on a bus bench in front of the bank. A short time later, I observed a vehicle in a driveway south of the bank. The car was traveling west from the rear of the bank to the front. The vehicle stopped next to the building and I observed two men, in business suits exit the vehicle. One had what appeared to be a small object in his right hand. Both were approaching the night drop deposit door when the individuals got up from the bus bench and approached the two men.
fell to the ground. One of the gangsters from the bus bench reached down and took the object from the fallen man. Then both gangsters then ran north from the incident. The other man began yelling for help. As I approached the scene, I put out, “officer needs help, shots fired, one victim down!” I identified myself to the uninjured man and discovered the victim had been shot once in the stomach. I had observed a robbery. The men were the manager (the injured victim) and assistant manager of a shoe store that was located two blocks north of the bank and were making a night drop of the funds earned by the store that day.
Damn, forgot all about Ron. So, I went into the bar to get him and the look on his face said, “what, did I do something wrong?” When we exited, Ron saw the air unit, all the flashing lights, the coppers and he turned to me an asked, “is this all for me!?”
As a forensic nurse, I often work with attorneys as an expert witness. I instruct the jury to listen to what the evidence tells you not what the people involved say. Everything must be accurate, and the smallest of details matter in solving a crime or proving a case. One of the problems we often have is that because of the fictional depiction of investigations where DNA is always present and can be processed in 45 minutes juries now expect DNA to be presented. Not only is that difficult at times but if not processed properly and kept from contamination it can be useless and confuse the issue. This issue called “the CSI effect” can destroy a case and cause the jury to vote innocent when they believe DNA should have proved the case.
As a nurse, my friends in MWA (Mystery Writers of America) often asked me what this or that meant, how this procedure worked in medicine, and what symptoms they would find if someone did this. I realized that all the available literature – often difficult for the nonprofessional to access – was written in medicalese. There was nothing written for the ordinary, well-educated reader. It was for this reason that I wrote the Book of Poisons (formerly called Deadly Doses) for Writer’s Digest and with that they started their “How To” series.
Check your facts and, if you can, use the correct ones – or at least in your epilogue explain what you did and what the real situation might have been. And if you are doing research, don’t take another fictional author’s scene as fact be it in medical, historical or even location information.
An award-winning writer of books, scripts, adaptations and teacher of writing, Serita also serves as a forensic/medical/poison consultant for numerous writers, producers, and several shows as well as being an expert witness for attorney’s cases. Books can be bought from her site 
As Ed mentioned, he would often park and shut the engine off. I seldom did that, but I found the hardest thing to teach a rookie cop was patience. Wait until the crime occurs before you jump in. An example: we got a call of a possible burglar at an apartment building. We did all the right things, approach with lights off, radio turned down and we quietly approached the building. We peeked around the corner of the building. We saw a suspect step into the bushes next to an apartment window, my probationer jumped out and yelled, “police freeze.” The DA refused to file charges, stating we stopped the suspect before he committed a crime. 
Routine can be a good thing, right? Honestly, sometimes it can be deadly. Doing the same things at the same times every day creates habits. It’s said it takes two weeks of repetition to make a behavior a habit. I’ll admit it—I’m a creature of habit. Maybe it’s a result of an exciting career in law enforcement, the bulk in dispatch. No two days were ever the same. Frankly, the excitement was one reasons I loved the job. Every day was different. Believe me, after thirty-five years, I was ready for some boredom. Give me a chance to etch out a routine, please!
So, my mystery ending is a mystery to me. Granted my characters are established—this is the fourth in the Nick and Meredith Mysteries. My previous publisher named the series and I’m sorry to say they’re not mysteries at all. They are thrillers. In each of the three (
And if you’re in the Marin/Sonoma area on Saturday, March 3rd, stop in to Novato’s Margaret Todd Senior Center, 1560 Hill Road, for the Spring Crafts Fair. Thonie will be there from 10am-3pm selling and signing her books.
We were still driving two and year-old Plymouths. They were all automatic transmissions and the heater worked sometimes. No air or power steering in the beginning. The brakes on the ‘69 Plymouths only worked after heating up. I almost had a few accidents just trying to drive out of the station parking lot.
By Natasha Yim
It is early morning, February 4, 2018, Super Bowl Sunday. I have just finished reading of Mikey’s park adventures with a nature lover. I was reminded of several park funnies.
Wearing only a baby doll nighty and a baseball cap (very fashionable) he targeted only female riders. Singles or in groups, it made no difference to him. He leapt from the bushes, shouted some obscenity, flashed the riders and disappeared back into the brush where they could not follow. Several spooked horses, thrown riders and complaints brought Metro onto the scene.
