Earlier this year, my father (David Conway) went into a memory care facility. He is suffering from both Parkinson’s Disease and vascular dementia. These diseases robbed him of a great many things—his independence, his confidence, and his humor. It’s very hard to communicate with my dad now as he frequently mumbles and often doesn’t maintain eye contact.
Read MoreIn 2019, I attended Left Coast Crime (LCC), a writers’ conference held that year in Vancouver B.C—only six hours from my hometown. It was my first conference of the sort, and I quickly learned it offered many great experiences.
Read MoreA reader of my books once stated that she didn’t like “heroes with muddy feet.”
This comment was directed toward Detective James Morgan, the protagonist in The Value in Our Lies, the fifth novel in the 509 Crime Stories. The reader had consumed the first four novels in the series and enjoyed them. She set down the fifth book after the opening chapter.
Read MoreHave you ever rewatched a movie you loved on a streaming service then noticed the one-star reviews? I saw Narc last night with Jason Patric and Ray Liotta. It’s a favorite of mine from the early aughts. If you disagree and hate it, that’s cool. There are plenty of movies that others like that I don’t.
Read MoreA friend of mine asked how I managed to fit writing into my life. He's writing a book and admitted that it'd been a challenging process. By the time he gets home from the office, he's mentally exhausted and needs to focus on his family. He asked how I manage to find time to write when we have similar situations.
Read MoreRich, one of my frequent readers, posted a comment to me via Goodreads that ran along the line of, “Why do so many fictional detectives have failed marriages.”
Read MoreDid you know that you can suggest your local library carry a specific book? It's true.
Read MoreRecently, my 29-year-old daughter finished a self-improvement book that my girlfriend had gotten for her. She loved that book and didn’t know what to read next. She came to me for a recommendation.
Read MoreI love music. Hang around me for any length of time, and you’ll probably discover that my favorite genre is hard rock. It seeps into the way I talk, the way I dress, and the way I connect with others. While some in my age bracket (a slacker wave to those in Generation X) might be embarrassed to say they’re still metalheads, I’m not.
Read MoreThe knockout game is the concept of randomly selecting a victim and then rendering them unconscious with a single blow.
It’s violent, it’s illegal, and it always preys on a weaker victim.
Read MoreSPOILER ALERT!
If you haven’t read THE BLIND TRUST yet, this post gives away a big component of the story. Turn back if you want to keep this reveal hidden.
Read MoreFor a period of roughly six months, I woke up frequently with a song snippet in my head.
I didn’t think much of it at the time. I wasn’t concerned by it. More than anything, it was an oddity. A funny trick that my mind seemed to be playing on me. When the songs happened, I kind of enjoyed them.
Those musical greetings gave my mornings a little bit of a twist.
Read MoreHearing a word, or a combination of words, can sometimes spark a writer’s imagination. This occurred to me when I first encountered the term ‘side hustle.’
Read MoreC316—pronounced correctly as Charlie three sixteen—is a police officer call sign. To be exact it was my call sign for a year while with the Spokane Police Department.
Read MoreAs a boy, I owned a red dog. Red, I called him.
Creative? Not really, but the name was direct and to the heart of things.
Read MoreIn the late sixties, there was an anti-war slogan “Suppose They Gave a War and No One Came.” It was popularized in a McCall’s magazine article of the same name and later in a movie.
Read MoreIt took four years to get Tales from the Road into print. Buildings can be designed, built, and occupied in shorter time. Marriages have been started, consummated, and ended in that amount of time. That’s four complete seasons of baseball. Needless to say (yet I’m still saying it), creating that book took a long, damn time.
Read MoreOn January 4th, 2019 I released The Side Hustle, a self-published crime fiction novel. I didn’t seek a publisher for this novel for a couple of reasons. I’ll get to that in a bit.
Before I do, let me tell you about the book.
Read MoreOn the previous New Year’s Eve, I wrote a post (How Many Books Did You Read This Year?) that detailed the number of books I read (30) in 2017. This was in follow-up to an earlier post, You Are What You Read. Personally, the latter article is one of my favorites and in it I shared my personal reading plan.
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