A housefly drifted into the bus this morning as the door emptied another passenger. As I watched it circle, I imagined his whole worldview was about to change. Was his other fly friends and family going to buzz, “whatever happened to Fred?”
DON'T EVER GIVE UP
NOT YOUR AVERAGE PI PART 2 (an author let's his main character speak for himself)
Ok, the boss says he needs me to “man up” so he can get you readers interested in this book that he’s trying to push. Easy for him to say. He’s had a pretty normal life. Mine has been about as far from normal as you can get. Although, now that I think of it, I guess that’s what will make a good book.
Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah. I was depressed as hell, telling you about my parents dying during my senior year of high school. As I said, up until that point, my life was going pretty damn well. My grades were great and I had a beautiful girlfriend named, Lisa. Life was perfect, until it wasn’t.
My parent’s death hit me hard. Yeah, I know that would hit any kid hard. However, it sent me into a spiral into darkness that almost consumed me. I stopped going to classes, stopped hanging out with anyone. Fortunately, it was the end of the year, and the only thing left for me to do was take the finals. Being a sudden orphan caused the school administration to cut me a lot of slack, and I was allowed to just take the tests and not have to walk for the graduation ceremony.
And, I broke up with Lisa.
Actually, it was worse than that. I just left. When drowning in grief, you make stupid decisions. My most stupid decision was shutting everyone left out of my life. In my muddled brain, I thought she would be much better off with a normal life. Besides, I reasoned, I was off to Yale and she was going to Florida State. Long distance relationships are dicey in the best of circumstances. Throw in a severely depressed orphan with dwarfism, and you have a recipe for a crappy life ahead.
That bone-headed decision would have tragic consequences for both of us. More on that later.
My time at Yale is a blur. I channeled my depression into getting lost in my studies. I had no personal life. If I wasn’t in class, I was at the Law library. My meals were at a local Irish pub where I would take up a booth in the back, surrounded by my law books and greasy plates of boxtys and foam-lined empty pint glasses of Guinness.
I didn’t form any real friendships at Yale. My dark moods, atrocious eating habits, and strange appearance, earned me the nickname of, Gimli. You know, the dwarf from The Lord of the Rings.
I take that back. I did make one minor friend. There was a guy in my dorm that was a computer whiz. My PC was crap, and I lost an important term paper. He not only recovered the file, he super-charged my computer, and hacked me into all sorts of databases that made my studies much easier, as well as get me some cool free video games. However, the best thing he did for me was clue me into the ground floor of several startups that would eventually lead to the Dot-Com boom. My parent’s inheritance allowed me to get heavily invested, and paved the way for many things to come. Yeah, I eventually cashed out before the bust. I have a gift for seeing when the feces is about to hit the fan.
Graduating from Yale Law School two years early, I was recruited, sight unseen, by a high-end Atlanta law firm. When they saw the package they had hired, they had the legal prudence to not make my dwarfism an issue. In time, they came to value how my strolling into a courtroom immediately took the opposing counsel of guard, and allowed me to tear their case apart while they tried to recover from the shock.
Life was good, at least financially. My personal life was nonexistent. My dark moods and long office hours led to relationships that rarely lasted longer than three dates. Drinking was beginning to become an issue. Hell, it had been an issue for a few years. However, it began to affect my health and my work. After ending up in the ER with a heart arrhythmia that took me off an important case, the senior partner at the firm benched me, and told me to take a month off and get myself straight.
It was a turning point in my life.
I’ll tell you about it next time.
NOT YOUR AVERAGE PI
Although I’d much rather be sipping an ice-cold Negroni on the aft deck of my converted tugboat, the boss (I refuse to call him a creator) says I have to spill my story so you readers will want to buy books and stories about my eventful life. I’m used to racking up info about other folks. However, offering up my own details doesn’t come easy.
Anyway, here we go.
I entered this world 44-years-ago, born to a beautiful woman named, Elizabeth Rooney. Now, those of you with an eye for details already notice the different last name. For two years, I was a Rooney as well. We were the typical American family, except that none of us were above 4’6”. Like my boss already noted, I’ve got achondroplasia dwarfism. I got a full genetic dose from both parents.
After two years of tumultuous bliss, my actor birth father got a gig out in Hollywood and never came back. Being a single young mother is hard enough. Add to it, having to raise a child with special needs while you, yourself, are challenged by a world made for taller folks, and my mother should have been awarded sainthood. However, she did it for three more years.
By the time I blew out five candles on my birthday cake, our lives took a turn for the better. My mother was working on her first novel and tending bar at a local Irish Pub in Pensacola, Florida called, McGuire’s. She met a dashing young Navy pilot named, Benjamin Larson. The six-foot pilot and four-foot little beauty turned quite a few heads. However, any snigger of laughter died a quick death when Ben stared down the offender and offered to go outside. One year later, a had a new step-father and my mom a new house with an office for her writing.
The next several years were a dream. Ben moved from flying to Naval Intelligence, while my mom’s first three cozy mystery novels garnered her respectable spots on the New York Times Bestseller list, and an Edgar Award for best debut novel.
Meanwhile, inheriting my mom’s love of learning, I excelled at school, especially in English and Debate. I guess that I inherited my birth father’s knack for theatrics, since I had a talent for making friends with ease. My dwarfism was rarely an issue. When it was, Ben taught me to master control of my emotions through meditation and martial arts. The later skill also helped deal with the few bullies that quickly learned the lesson that size doesn’t matter.
My perfect world came to a crushing halt during my senior year in high school. While on vacation in Majorca, Spain, my mother and Ben died when their car was blind-sided by a large truck, loaded with almonds. Their car tumbled down a cliff and into the Mediterranean below. It took several hours for divers to reach the wreckage. No bodies were ever recovered.
Alright, that’s it for now. I’m doing this as a favor and it’s bumming me out. Maybe I’ll continue later and tell you all how I came to be a private investigator. Then again, maybe I’ll tell the boss to go to hell.
Later.
MEET BUTCH "FIX" LARSON
A few years back, I was brainstorming ideas for a private detective story. I wanted him to be different than the stereotypical PI. Having been born in Northwest Florida, I decided to place my detective in an area I was intimately familiar with and not generally well known to the readership of detective novels. I chose the rural community of Santa Rosa County, a county just east of the city of Pensacola. The county runs from the sugar white sands of the Gulf of Mexico to the pine covered border with Alabama.
As for the cast of characters, I’ve been a fan of the quirky and sometimes outrageous inhabitants of the works of Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey, and Elmore Leonard. I wanted my stories to tackle serious topics while maintaining an atmosphere where some crazy stuff could happen at any moment. I also believe there needs to be a little humor to temper the edge of serious crimes. I knew all sorts of real whacky people in Northwest Florida. Hell, how many news stories have you seen that start with the tag line, “A man in Florida…”?
When it came to my detective, he had to be unique. I wanted readers to see him, and like his adversaries, underestimate him by his appearance. Having read Game of Thrones and saw the TV series, I knew the character of Tyrion, played wonderfully by Peter Dinklage, was my model. So, he’s 4’4” and has achondroplasia dwarfism.
My initial step was to research the condition of achondroplasia and how a person with the condition would adapt the world around them to suit their needs. My first outreach was to the former President of the Little Persons of New Zealand, Angela Muir Van Etten. Her books were invaluable in learning about the lives of people with dwarfism. Additionally, she put me in touch with members of the LP community who became my beta and sensitivity readers. I started following blogs, podcasts, and social media accounts of people with dwarfism. Their words and experience opened my world to this wonderful community. I was determined to make my detective someone they could be proud of and a positive representation.
Armed with loads of research, I was ready to bring Fix Larson alive. In my next post, I’ll introduce you to Fix as well as his family and the cast of characters that inhabit his world.
$ A WRITER'S LIFE IS EXPENSIVE $
I SMELL SMOKE
The High Cost of Being a Writer
Last week, I made my hotel reservations and registered for this year’s BoucherCon Mystery Convention. The last time I attended was back in 2023 when it was at my home base of San Diego. So, no hotel or plane tickets were needed. This year, it’s being held in New Orleans, and my wallet is bruised.
Although I have a great agent and this year has been a leap forward in my career, we still have not sold my novel to a publisher. So, other than some short story sales, my writing is not paying any bills. It’s also not paying for any writer conventions or seminars. There’s no publisher footing the bill for my travel and no conventions are going to invite me to appear when I don’t have a book to plug. So, I have to be picky with money choices.
I chose BoucherCon because it’s one of the best mystery conventions out there. It’s run by mystery readers and all of the best authors attend. The panels are fun and informative. However, the value for me is meeting fellow authors as well as meeting editors and publishers in search of new talent. This will be the first BoucherCon with my new agents and I’m hoping we get some interest in my Fix Larson private detective series.
So, I broke open the piggy bank and made some reservations. The biggest cost? The hotel. After taxes and tourist fees, the cost for lodging is going to be about double the cost of my flight and registration combined. Granted, it’s the Marriott in the middle of New Orleans. Still, it smack in the middle of hurricane season and you’d hope for a in climate weather break.
My patient wife says it’s all an investment in my writing career. I agree. But damn, it’s a costly one.
EDITING
They may or not be tequila in my Mexican Coke while I work on edits of my latest Fix Larson short story. #tequila #writing #editing #shortstory
Genx Trauma
There’s a reason that I write good detective and horror fiction.
The Dust Has Settled
Gave the latest short story a week for the dust to settle. This morning, jumped back in to start the edit. Already found a plot hole. #writing #editing #5amwritersclub
