News From the Top

President’s Report

It’s hard to believe the end of 2024 is approaching fast. There’s a saying about the days passing slowly while the years zip by. I’m not sure that’s completely accurate, especially as I get older. The days feel fast, and the years feel even faster.

The PSWA Board is already looking forward to 2025. As you’ll read in Mike Black’s report, next summer’s conference (the Roaring Twentieth) is taking shape. He’s scheduled the featured speakers, while Kelli Peacock and Frank Scalise have developed the workshop. Members are registering for these events already, so make sure you register now to take advantage of the early-bird pricing.

Barbara Hodges and the writing competition judges are eagerly waiting for January 1, when submissions begin to arrive. I’m excited about some changes we’ll see in 2025, including the PSWA 100—a short story category dedicated to tales exactly 100 words long—not one word over or under. How cool is that? Besides those mentioned above, the rest of the board also deserves a shout-out for the excellent work they do to keep the association moving forward—Steve Ditmars, M.E. (Peg) Roche, Vicki Weisfeld, and Tim Dees. We’re very lucky to have this entire team in place.

The twilight of every year is also an opportunity for personal reflection. How are we, as authors, preparing to further our careers? Maybe we should put a favorite character aside and try something new. Perhaps an educational opportunity could take our sales to new heights. Or, is sticking to our tried-and-true exactly what our audience wants?

Whatever direction we envision, we should take a few moments and ponder where we’re going. Then quickly return to writing. The best marketing any of us can do is write the next good book. Have a wonderful holiday season!

Colin Conway, President

Vice President’s Report

Greetings, Public Safety Writers,

As we have moved from summer into fall and now begin to ease into the holiday season, I feel like giving thanks. This may seem trite to some, but I am genuinely thankful for many things.

First, to our great membership. Over the years, I have been a member of numerous organizations. Often my fellow-members were more interested in furthering their own success than offering a helping hand to others. Here, at the PSWA, I routinely see our members answering questions for others. We have so many experts among our participants that rarely does someone pose a question that doesn’t receive several thoughtful responses and suggestions.

This year, we experienced a significant change in leadership. Our past leaders brought the PSWA a long way, and the new ones are bold in their plans for future growth. Our organization exists during a time of change, including in the literary and publishing landscape. Rather than fighting this, we have embraced transformation to make PSWA a success.

Your board also works diligently to make our organization serve the members well. Although everyone has worked hard, I want to highlight Tim Dees. Our website needed to catch up to various changes and opportunities, and Tim’s time and mental energy bringing it up to speed and improving its function, have been invaluable. I am grateful to Tim for his work and dedication.

As membership VP, I would like to thank those who have renewed their membership already. 2025 will be a great year for PSWA!

Steve Ditmars, Vice President

Treasurer’s Report

It’s time for PSWA’s annual membership fees. If you have already paid, thank you; if not, they are due by January 31, 2025. Keeping your membership current ensures you won’t lose access to PSWA benefits (the listserv, the member Facebook page, and conference fee discounts, for example).

We do have options for paying membership renewals and conference payments. The simplest option is pushing the button on the website. If that doesn’t work for you, you can pay directly with PayPal or Zelle, and, if you have any difficulties, please contact me directly at [email protected] or [email protected], and I will help.

PayPal and Zelle options

If you have a PayPal account and want to use that option, log in to the PayPal website and use the “Send Money” function. Enter [email protected] as the payee. You’ll be prompted to enter the amount and what the payment is for (dues, conference, workshop, for example). Choose which account the payment will come from, and make the payment.

The Zelle option, which you can access from your bank account, requires you to send the payment to [email protected].

Maintaining a Fiscally Stable Organization

The board takes its fiduciary responsibilities seriously. Your dues are used for insurance, fees, Website hosting, and related expenses. Our monthly Zoom meetings are working well, but we’ve found it more beneficial to meet in person once a year. Usually, we meet at The Orleans in February for two whole days, to engage in long-term organizational planning, review plans for the forthcoming conference, and consider new ways to serve members. This year we are foregoing the in-person meeting in order to save those expenses and create a bit of a financial cushion, which we hope to use for a redesign of the PSWA website.

After this past conference, it became clear we needed to increase membership dues slightly, as well as the conference price, in order to meet rising costs, which affect conferences, just as they do everything else. We have a good working relationship with The Orleans, and we broke even last year. What a wonderful feeling! But there wasn’t anything left over that would let us do more as an organization and serve our members better.

P.S., the conference would not have paid for itself without the extra support of our refreshment sponsors, program advertisers, and a few anonymous contributors. Thank you again to all who participated, and I look forward to next year’s sponsorships and advertising—and our 2025 conference!

Kelli Peacock, Treasurer

Conference Program Report – 2025

As I write this, the long and contentious election season is over, and you’re either happy or sad. Since we’re apolitical here at the PSWA I’ll refrain from writing more about that, except to say, “Let’s all move on and start thinking about the fun we’ll have in the PSWA and at the next conference, July 17-20, 2025, at the Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada!” We have some great things planned for this get-together, titled “The Roaring Twentieth,” and here are some of them.

Featured Speakers
Our outstanding line-up of featured speakers leads off with retired LAPD detective, acclaimed writer, and PSWA member, Mike Brandt, at right, who will detail some of the tricks to perfecting a dynamite story. After a long career as a homicide detective specializing in gang crimes, Mike (AKA Brandon Michaels) directed a Health Care Fraud Department for 15 years. Along the way, he ran marathons on all seven continents and climbed mountains in various parts of the world. Join this esteemed writer, who’s penned articles, short stories, and novels—and who’s also an accomplished speaker—as he shows you how to create that perfect story-line that will entertain and keep readers turning those pages to reach a stunning climax.

Friday afternoon, retired colonel and 28-year Air Force veteran, member Bob Doerr (left),will fill us in about how law enforcement and criminal investigations work in the various branches of the military. Having specialized in investigating crimes and counterintelligence in countries around the world, his work brought him into close coordination with many nations’ security agencies. Forget what you see those TV military cops doing, not to mention what you see on the NCIS shows. Much of it is pure fiction. Bob will set the record straight. He’s the real deal.

Saturday morning, acclaimed actor and audiobook narrator Scott Ellis (right) will talk about “From Print to Audio: Producing an Audio Book.” Scott has narrated more than 100 audiobooks, and he and his wife, Josie, own Scott Ellis Reads, which has produced more than 250 audiobooks. Additionally, they have helped many authors bring their first projects to audio. After 30 years as an educator and actor, Scott is all about performing and teaching. He will discuss the ins and outs of audiobook production—everything from understanding the different platforms, the payment lingo, and the responsibilities of narrator and author, as well as how he helps authors think through their options for putting their stories into the audio format.

Saturday afternoon, PSWA member and police sergeant Joshua Lee (left) will take you for a walk on the wild side. We’ve all heard about the dangers of the Dark Web and how it supports criminal activity. But probably few of us have ventured to visit it. Well, here you go. Josh works in the Organized Crime, Human Trafficking, and Complex Financial Crimes Division of the Mesa, Arizona, Police Department, and will give us an inside look at the Dark Web and what it takes to navigate this dangerous territory. You don’t want to miss this one! Like us, our readers have heard about the Dark Web and its role in crime, and they may expect to encounter it in our stories. Be ready for them!

Rounding things out on Sunday morning, a leading public safety psychologist, our member Ellen Kirschman will talk about “First responder PTSD: Getting it Right.” Some studies estimate that a third of all first responders suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Ellen, who has worked with first responders for years, shares what no one else will—the little-recognized factors that put emergency service workers at risk. She is an award-winning public safety psychologist and author of I Love a Cop: What Police Families Need to Know, I Love a Firefighter: What the Family Needs to Know, lead author of Counseling Cops: What Clinicians Need to Know, and five mysteries, all told from the perspective of police psychologist, Dr. Dot Meyerhoff.

Pre-Conference Workshop
Adding to that impressive lineup is our Pre-Conference Workshop (July 17, 9 am to 3:15 pm). This year a new pair of drivers are handling the reins: Kelli Peacock and Frank Scalise (AKA Frank Zafiro), and these two distinguished authors have a fantastic line-up of guest instructors.

Your newsletter editor Vicki Weisfeld is planning a fun, interactive session about—what else?—words. In your work, every word counts. She’ll cover common errors in grammar and usage, how AI (grammar checkers) can lead you astray, and ways to make your manuscript more than the sum of its parts. Kelli Peacock will dive into “subplots.” She’ll not only talk about why you need them in your novel, but also how you can effectively work them in and make them work for you. Our lives are complex and messy and loaded with subplots (that pesky ex-, for example). As authors, we must similarly complicate the lives of our characters—protagonists and secondary characters alike. Subplots accomplish this. Award-winning author of many books and series, Frank Scalise will talk about “Managing Your Series.” He’ll discuss managing a single series over time, including how to handle characters who evolve (or not), managing continuity, keeping things fresh, and creating emotional anchors. He’ll also review issues that arise when managing multiple series, including the pros and cons of character crossover. Rounding things out, Colin Conway will talk about “Developing Your Author Brand.” It’s no secret that authors’ success depends on factors beyond the strength of their writing. Colin will explain how focusing on your author brand can help you compete in today’s crowded marketplace.

Workshop attendees may elect to have their work critiqued for FREE in a one-on-one session with one of our published authors. If you’d like a critique (you might choose the opening or a section you aren’t sure is working), you may submit up to 7000 words. Format for your document: Times New Roman, 12 point, double-spaced, and compatible with Microsoft Word. Critique comments and suggestions will be provided via the Track Changes feature, in addition to an in-person review with you. This critique is offered FREE, but you should note that standard market rates conservatively estimate its value at $350.

Hotel Logistics & More

The hotel room discount codes for rooms rented during the PSWA conference will be posted online as soon as the information becomes available. In the meantime, you can make your reservations by calling The Orleans at (855) 212-1725 or visiting https://theorleanshotel.guestreservations.com/orleans-casino/booking.

We’re considering having a “Come as your favorite character” costume contest on Friday. Interested? If so, let me know at [email protected].

So what are you waiting for? Sign up today. Take it from me, the PSWA Conference is one of the friendliest and best of its kind, and I’ve been to a ton of different meetings. Even if this is your first one, I guarantee you won’t leave as a stranger.

This is one you won’t want to miss! See you in Vegas.

Michael A. Black, Conference Program Chair

Writing Competition Report

Season’s Greetings. We’ve almost reached the end of 2024. I’m looking forward to 2025. I always look forward to January, with the sometimes-stressful Christmas gathering behind me. It’s a fresh start. No, I don’t make resolutions, but a new year is full of all kinds of possibilities. And January 22nd, Jeff and I will celebrate our 53rd wedding anniversary.

Of course, January 1st is also when you can start sending me your entries for the writing competition. After reading your comments about the competition on the 2024 conference survey, and after much discussion among the board members, we’ve made some changes. By the time you read this, the new entry guidelines will be posted on the website. Just click the writing competition button.

Our award now has a name–the Medallion Award—which we hope will contribute to its greater visibility (like the Edgar, the Agatha, the Shamus, and so on). A gold, silver, and bronze medallion will be awarded in each entry category. As a result of rising costs, the board reluctantly raised the entry fee to $30.00 for a first entry and $20.00 each for a second and subsequent entries.

There is also a new challenge for you, as Colin previewed above—the PSWA 100. You must tell us your story or provide us with your (non-fiction) information in exactly 100 words, not including the title. Can you do it? And we will be counting those words.

I’m keeping this short. If you’re like me, time is something you have in limited supply. I look forward to seeing more fantastic writing from you. Happy Holidays.

Barbara M. Hodges, Writing Competition Chair

Member News

In September, member Joe Haggerty (a frequent PSWA award-winner!) published his fourth book, Stories from the Street, containing three short stories/novellas and several poems. Two of these stories were award-winners in the PSWA Writing Competition. The stories are fiction, he says, “but all carry an element of cases I have worked.” The book is available at Amazon in print and for Kindle Joe thanks Barbara Hodges for her “tremendous help in making the publishing of this book possible.” Stories from the Street is subtitled Volume One. Does this mean we have more editions to look forward to?

Allen Grimes reports that, on October 30th, an Arizona Western College Theatre Department Halloween program included a one-act adaptation of his short story, “When the Lights Go Dim,” at the AWC Theater. The story is from his published collection of suspenseful stories, The Ghosts of Lake Hope (available from Amazon). He says that “The actors really got into the parts and portrayed the angst of the characters who were faced with an impossible moral dilemma.” They brought out the raw emotion he’d tried to convey in the story.

At the same event, Allen performed a dramatic reading from his novel, When the Lantern Swings (also available from Amazon), and signed autographed copies of his book. “When the Lights Go Dim” is part of the Lake Hope universe and will be expanded to a novel next year. Lake Hope State Park is a real place in southern Ohio, near-ish Athens. A nice place to visit . . . in the daytime.

As member Jim Guigli points out, “Pirate stories are always a great Christmas gift.” Stuff those stockings with his new book, released November 1, Under the Black Flag: Piracy is not a Victimless Crime (and read about book piracy in “Publishing Tips and Travails” below). Jim’s character, a PI and former Berkeley, Calif., street cop is on the hunt for a client’s husband kidnapped by a group of self-styled pirates. He travels to Lake Tahoe, encountering yacht clubs, casinos, mansions, and three aging outlaw bikers. As Jim asks, “What would Bogie do?” His book is available here from Amazon and, he says, “wherever fine books are sold.”

Riding on the popularity of digital audio books, which Publisher’s Weekly in this article says are making a big contribution to the current increase in book sales, Peg Roche has launched a self-created audiobook version of her novel, Mystery at Marian Manor (order it here). Peg says audiobook production had a steep learning curve, but by the end, “it was actually kind of fun!” She watched a webinar about Derek Doepker’s Audiobooks Made Easy. program, then purchased the class at a discounted $297. To narrate the books herself, she needed a microphone, mic stand, and headphones, yet her total expenditure was a fraction of the cost of commercial audiobook production. She used the free software Audacity and the Auphonic AI program to even out the sound. ACX’s (Amazon) free audiolab enabled her to upload one chapter at a time to make sure it met Amazon’s standards. Now she’s ready to create more audiobooks from her Nora Brady series and more! She also has a new book coming soon, Fire for Hire, in which a pair of detective discover that “playing with fire is a game where even heroes can get burned.”

Barbara Hodges is working on a new book befitting her basset hound logo, which has the intriguing title, Hounded by Hope. She says at least she has a plan to get the book edited. She’ll ask Kelli Peacock to help. Barbara says, “She edited Deadly Rituals for me. Her prices are reasonable, and I like the fact that she doesn’t try to re-write your work. If something is off, like if you changed a character’s name, eye color, or make of car, she catches it. She knows where the commas go—a big deal for me. I tend to put them where they shouldn’t be and miss the spots that need them. She gave me a timeline for completion, and she met it.” High praise, indeed. And, she’ll be the guest of Frank Zafiro (Frank Scalise to you) on the 187th edition of his podcast Wrong Place, Write Crime, December 11. Access it here. Barbara will discuss her work in multiple genres—mystery, fantasy, and children’s books, to name a few—and her writing process. Tune in!

Frank Scalise himself has two new books out (again, just in time for the holidays!). The first, written as Frank Zafiro with Colin Conway, is The Silence of the Dead in their Charlie-316 series (order here from Amazon). In it, Major Crimes Detective Wardell Clint seeks to tie together a series of unsolved murders going back decades. Shaky memories, generations of investigators and witnesses, there’s a truth to be uncovered (ebook or paper).

Zafiro wrote the second book, Nor Shadowed Heart, solo. It features River City police Sergeant Katie MacLeod trying to come to terms with her new leadership role, as her team takes on a risky protection detail on top of the usual graveyard shift shenanigans (ebook, order here).

PSWA Newsletter editor Vicki Weisfeld has a new story, “The Widow’s Pique,” in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories. It’s her fourth Holmes pastiche. Mrs. Hudson’s cousin is in trouble, and Holmes and Watson are on the case. The new book is Part XLVII of this long-running series and contains 59 new Holmes adventures. You can order it here from Amazon. Christmas? Hanukkah? Winter Solstice?

The Writing Craft: Upping Your Game

Connecting with the Past

Some of the best crime/mystery/thriller stories your editor has read recently take place in some past era: Robert Harris’s Precipice (World War I), Mike Black’s Where Legends Lie (1880 and 1913), and selections from The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024, Nils Gilbertson’s “Lovely and Useless Things” (Prohibition), Jordan Harper’s “My Savage Year” (a look back at adolescence).

My history education was tiny-high-school minimal, but my husband trained in it, and his encyclopedic knowledge and ability to remember the history and politics of every country we’ve visited has added immeasurably to our vacation trips. Me, I’m in charge of art, architecture, and food. I’ve learned so much from him, and after a couple of martinis will be glad to recite the kings and queens of England from William the Conqueror in 1066 to Charles III.

The artist Jeff Koons advises people to “take your history on board.” For me and my writing, one of the chief benefits of my genealogy hobby is recognizing more acutely how my own ancestors’ lives were affected by where they lived and when they lived there. It isn’t all pretty, either.

When you start asking “why?” you come up with some powerful answers. Why did my mother’s family end up in Central Texas? Because the ruin and devastation of the Civil War was so great in Central Tennessee, my great-great grandparents and their eight children became part of the GTT (Gone To Texas) movement. Their homes and farms and animals were collateral damage in the Civil War Battle of Stones River (Murfreesboro), only a dozen miles from their doorstep and involving more than 78,000 soldiers. So, why were they in Tennessee in the first place? Because in previous generations the men served in the Revolutionary War and were given bounty land there. A century of drama and passionate feeling for sure.

Their wounds could not have been far below the surface and, in some cases, were handed down through the generations. Like the wounds the characters in your novel and their families have suffered. Only after I finished my novel Architect of Courage did I realize my main character (a successful Manhattan architect) returned to his Vietnam War experience whenever he was in the greatest danger. Then and only then. This wasn’t conscious “creative writing” on my part; it was intuitive recognition of the character’s history.

Among my family’s Tennessee neighbors was the Huddleston family, ancestors of New Yorker and Atlantic writer and National Book Award-winner George Packer, who says, “History, any history, confers meaning on a life.” Only two of my stories are overtly historical, but reflecting on my family’s history has taught me to think about—or subconsciously reflect—more kinds of connections, past and present, as I write. It’s helpful grounding in this era of “nothing matters but the last five minutes” attention spans.

The Art of Revision – By Michael A. Black

No doubt about it, revision is an art. One of my favorite writers, Roald Dahl, once said, “Good writing is rewriting.” I read that bit of advice from Mr. Dahl many years ago and took it to heart. If you want to be a good writer, you have to master the art of revision.

I suppose the first step in revision involves rereading what you’ve written. After I finish a writing project, I like to let it sit for a while. I call this the fermentation period. The length of time varies, and depends on many factors. If you’re working against a deadline, the fermentation period might be shorter of necessity. In any case, after finishing a project, especially a lengthy one such as a novel, you’ve most likely become so immersed in it that you’ve lost some degree of objectivity. That’s why it’s important to take a break. If you have a trusted first reader, this is the ideal time to have your reader take a look at it (see the article on finding beta readers below). Unless my first reader discovers some major problems, I usually hold off on reviewing those suggestions until I’ve completed my own review.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Give the manuscript to your first reader, and then begin reading it yourself. You can gain a better perspective if you do this reading aloud. That way, you’re using three of your five senses, seeing, speaking, and hearing. Look (and listen) for awkward sentences, clumsy dialogue, word echoes, info dumps, typos, and places where there’s a better way to say what you’ve said.

As you revise, keep in mind that you have to be mindful of any ramifications of the changes you make. It’s always good to doublecheck. In a recent story I was working on, for instance, I made a change of having a guy sit down in a chair and stuff his big, .357 Colt Python into the cushion beside him. As I continued reading the scene, I realized that I subsequently had him drumming his fingers on the cylinder of the weapon, which he’d laid on the arm of the chair. The change I made with the cushion stuffing made the cylinder drumming impossible.

After I’ve completed my own rereading and tweaking, I place my revised copy and my first reader’s copy side-by-side and compare them. It’s always interesting to see what my reader caught, as compared to my own reading. Many times the same sentences that I circled in my once-over troubled my reader too. Sometimes I missed something, and I have to address it. Once again, the effect of any changes has to be doublechecked to make sure no new holes have been created.

If time permits, it’s always good to do another complete rereading. It’s almost a given that you’ll catch more stuff if you do. So when does the revising end? I hearken back to a scene from a Henry James story, “A Lesson of the Master.” The young, impressionable writer is thrilled to be at a retreat where this famous and talented author is present. As the young man walks along the pathway, eager to meet his idol, he happens to see the great author walking along the beach reading one of his own books. The young man is surprised to see the author making corrections to the text as he reads.

Suffice it to say, if you’re caught in an endless cycle of revision, your book will never be published. While the task of revision can go on and on, sometimes you just have to know when to call it quits.

Three Myths About Police Leadership – By Frank Scalise

Anyone who reads crime fiction or watches TV/movie police dramas will have opinions on what police leadership looks like. These views are often—surprise, surprise—flawed or even utterly inaccurate. It’s probably possible to write an entire book on these misconceptions, but here are three that really stand out, based on my own 20-year career experience—I retired as a captain—and my interactions with hundreds of cops since retirement in my role as a consultant/instructor in police leadership.

First up, The Yeller. It’s a common trope to see the hero’s superior, often a captain or lieutenant, call a cop onto the carpet and harangue him/her mercilessly for whatever transgressions s/he has committed. It’s such a ubiquitous device that viewers have come to expect it at some point in any police story. Even I’ve fallen prey to inserting this type of character. The Last Collar has a lieutenant who is a classic yeller, and my River City series features the gruff and occasionally barking Lieutenant Crawford as a longtime supporting character.

Just one problem—it isn’t very accurate.

I’m not saying the occasional butt-chewing doesn’t happen. Or that there haven’t been police bosses who yell. But, by and large, police leaders are more interested in making sure that their people have the resources they need, that they are personally doing all right, and that they’re getting the job done. Essentially, conversations focused on “tell me what you need” and “tell me what you’ve done so far” occur most often. True, cops tend to be more direct than some other professions, but not to the degree shown on TV and the movies. (Mike Myers played on this trope in So I Married an Axe Murderer, 1993, in a clever way. The detective investigating the case had an understanding boss, but the detective was so taken by this idea of The Yeller that he literally asked his captain to holler at him so he felt like a real cop.)

Next, The Line Worker. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this one. Some writer who doesn’t know police work decides that his/her detective needs a little more clout, so suddenly s/he’s a lieutenant or a captain … but still investigating cases. Just one problem—it doesn’t work that way. Police agencies function with very well-defined roles, appropriate to rank. Officers and detectives do the actual work of responding to calls and investigating cases. This is the important work an organization does and it is accomplished by the line-level employees. Sergeants lead those line-level employees. Lieutenants, by and large, lead sergeants. And so on, up the chain.

Now, it isn’t quite as cut-and-dried as all that, unlike in the military. The exact rank structure varies by region and department. Size matters where this is concerned, as well. A 15-officer department may have a chief with two sergeants. Each sergeant might have five officers and one detective assigned to that team, and that’s it—that’s the whole department. Larger agencies may include more rank levels in order to support the structure—lieutenants, captains, etc. A particular rank may exist at some departments and not others. Travel all over the US and you’ll see quite a mish-mash.

But the one thing that is consistent is that (mostly) line-level officers and detectives provide the actual service to the public. They respond to calls and work cases. Sergeants supervise and lead. Yes, in some instances, a sergeant may still engage in “doing the job.” After all, s/he is in the

trenches with the troops. And this may be even more true in a very large agency, like LAPD. But, generally speaking, the sergeant’s primary responsibility is to lead. Simply put, leadership is a different job, not merely a higher pay grade for doing the same line-level job. This applies all the way up the chain.

I think this trope developed because some ill-informed writers wanted to give a character more cachet than being “just” a detective, so voila! She’s a lieutenant! Who investigates cases! And still gets called into the captain’s office and yelled at!

Lastly, The Incompetent. Sadly, this one has a stronger basis in reality, but nevertheless occurs far less often than depicted. The cliché is either that the leader is a bumbler or a complete weasel, driven by personal, career, or political motivations. Unfortunately—or rather, fortunately—this isn’t as common as you might think.

Sure, there are some bosses who are bumblers, as in every profession. Some may have been great cops but don’t do so well as leaders, lacking the different skill-set required. These can be the worst performers because they liked and were good at the work and tend to micromanage. The weasels care more about getting promoted than seeing organizational success. That’s so, even though ensuring that detectives and officers successfully complete their jobs actually works to the advantage of the weasel as well. Who among us hasn’t seen bosses at a meeting (or a press conference) taking credit for someone else’s work? Again, these types of leaders are the exception, not the rule.

A more common shortcoming among law enforcement leaders is losing perspective. When you’re off the street and your day is filled with meetings focused on budget and staffing and public concerns, those things become your reality. It’s easy to forget what it was like to be stuck on a perimeter for hours, guarding a crime scene in 20-degree weather. As a result, conflicts between command and line often result from each side being a bit too myopic, rather than from incompetent or corrupt leaders or disgruntled or lazy line workers.

Those are three of the leading myths regularly deployed to characterize police leadership in crime fiction, films, and television. The challenge for those of us who know better is to avoid the stereotypes and present a more nuanced picture. Not only will our fiction be fresher, in the long run, maybe we can reset some public expectations.

(Much of this material is drawn from a larger presentation Frank gives called “Police Procedurals: Getting It Right.” If your writer’s group, reading club, or library would like him to present, please contact him at [email protected])

When Your Character Is Afraid

I ran into an article recently on the physiology of fright and thought it might contain something useful in creating a character who’s frightened—something fresh, beyond the usual body language cues that have become clichés. Fear can hold characters back from their goals, no matter how large or small. It’s a solid opportunity to show, not tell.

A clinical neuroscientist and biomedical engineer explained the fear response like this:

The sensory cortex is the first part of the brain to detect fear, real or imagined. It signals trouble to the thalamus, which then alerts the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. So far, not much use in a story, unless it’s a medical thriller. But an additional insight stood out. It’s the amygdala (our emotional center) which causes people to freeze (“stop cold”) before they’re even aware of what’s happening
The prefrontal cortex does the analytic work in a highly focused way. That extreme focus can make events feel as if they happened in slow motion. When people are falling, they’ll reach their arms out to stop themselves. Again the action precedes the perception of danger, which is why they may be surprised to find themselves on the ground.
The amygdala not only sends a “watch out!” signal, it tells the nervous system to ramp up, to release various chemicals, such as cortisol, and to speed up breathing and heart rate. This enables more oxygen to reach the muscles and prepares them for action—fight or flight.
Then the brain floods with opioids, natural painkillers that come in handy in a fight or injury. You may recall how even seriously wounded soldiers say they didn’t feel anything—at least until the battle was over. In high-stakes athletic events, like the Olympics, some of these same effects are triggered, allowing athletes to perform beyond their usual capacity.
Once the threat is removed, the autonomic nervous system calms the body down again. Characters exposed to frequent stress (like public safety personnel!) pass through a frightful moment and return to baseline much more quickly than others. I know when I have a tense moment driving the Pennsylvania Turnpike (those trucks!), I feel my body’s reaction for quite a few miles, while those state police passing me at 90+ mph probably don’t notice a thing.

Publishing Tips and Travails

Pirates and Counterfeiters: Are They After Your Book?

Self-publishing author David Goggins sued Amazon this year for damages resulting from its sale of counterfeit books bearing his name. Although Goggins didn’t receive revenue from these sales, Amazon did. (Amazon hopes to arbitrate, as of October.) Goggins isn’t alone. The piracy problem affects “all types of publishers and authors” who have lost revenue due to counterfeits on Amazon and distribution of pirated content on eBay, Etsy, YouTube, WhatsApp, and various social media sites. Alas, proving your intellectual property was stolen can be difficult.

Evidence it’s happening may be a sale price for one of books that’s much too low. If you buy a sample or two, you can compare the quality of the product—paper, cover, etc.—with a “real” copy (more hints here). For paperbacks, some counterfeits may be especially difficult to spot.

Even if you have the evidence, it may be hard to get action. Amazon’s huge third-party marketplace includes counterfeits of many products, including books, but they may be slow to act on these scammers without your evidence and persistence. Certainly it’s worth starting by reporting the problem at Amazon’s Report Infringement System. You might also try the Amazon Brand Registry.

Digital copies of your book at risk, as well, and prey to piracy. Pirates use an array of websites, platforms, and tools to distribute phony digital copies. These may operate at a large scale and may be based overseas, in the hope they willo skirt U.S. laws.

According to an expert cited by Jane Friedman in her 10/9 edition of The Hot Sheet, fighting piracy and counterfeiting “takes resolve, and you can be fatigued by it all.” Further, some large tech companies “have dropped the ball” in the fight against physical counterfeits and digital piracy. “Repeat infringers on large tech platforms are able to open up accounts again and again and again.”

Putting the AI Genie Back in the Bottle, Maybe

As previous articles here have discussed, artificial intelligence companies have used authors’ books (often obtained from illegal pirate sites) to create their large language models (LLMs). Authors did not consent to this use, and authors and publishers were not compensated. In turn the LLMs have generated copycat books that excerpt or mimic authors’ original works. The Authors Guild has been fighting “the flagrant theft of books and journalism by AI companies on all fronts.”

The AI juggernaut appears unstoppable, and the Authors Guild is pinning its hopes on licensing—“by enforcing copyright and bringing control over uses back to the rightsholders so that all professional copyrighted works used to train generative AI are licensed and thus controlled.” Retrospectively and prospectively.

Some features of the kind of robust licensing system that the AG envisions are:

Licensing, with its limitations, restrictions, and compensation provisions, as a way to enforce copyright.
Authors would have a choice to not license a work for LLM development at all.
The system should encourage LLM owners to prohibit certain queries, such as requests for the actual text of a book or the use of a particular author’s style.
Authors would retain the right to control how their work is used: e.g., “yes” to training and “no” to LLM development or use in outputs (that is, text like yours).

A first step toward development of an AI licensing model is the new partnership between the AG and licensing platform developer Created by Humans.

Increasing Royalties: Are You Overlooking This Strategy?

If your KDP book is priced between $2.99 and $9.99, your Amazon royalty rate is 70 percent, right? Not necessarily. Amazon charges a “delivery fee” for each digital copy downloaded, which comes out of your 70 percent. The actual fee depends on the size of your book: for each megabyte of your ebook file, Amazon takes 15 cents. If your book is 2MB, Amazon will charge you 30 cents for each book sold. Let’s be optimistic and suppose you sell 10,000 of these ebooks a year—that’s another $3000 for Amazon.

In one of his informative articles kindlepreneur author Dave Chesson provides advice about reducing the bite of megabytes and walks you through the steps.

Remove images, which are megabyte hogs, or at least make them smaller
Compress the file, though you will have to preview the whole thing to make sure the formatting is still the way you want it
Compress the images, including your cover, ornamental breaks, etc., preferably before you upload them
Eliminate bloated code (Chasson’s product Atticus will do that for you, and though this article may read like a sales pitch by time you get to the end, in fact, a lot of the advice is doable and worthwhile regardless.)

Formatting software, if you use it, may take some or all of these steps, though you need to verify. Even if you hire an outside expert to format your book, he says, “it’s best to ask them what they did to reduce the file size.”

In Search of Beta Readers

Beta readers for your near-finished manuscript can help you improve it and become long-term cheerleaders for your writing. They may be subject experts (PSWA members!), or they may be lay persons, drawn from your anticipated audience. They tell you what they think about characters, plot, and flow, and their overall reactions. (This guide for nonfiction authors has useful insights for fiction writers who use beta readers as well.)

To find beta readers, you may turn to friends and family or your own social media and mailing list. But you want candid feedback, and people close to you may not be willing to share concerns. How about online groups dealing with your issue? Alumni groups? Writers’ forums and communities? Goodreads and Facebook each have public groups specifically geared to helping authors find beta readers. You might also check out The Spun Yarn, but there’s a fee involved ($699 for a comprehensive report from three readers).

Wherever you find your beta readers, the most important thing to tell them is what you expect. Maybe flow is much more important to you at this stage than copy-editing, for example. Give them any guidance on specific areas you’re worried about: undetected plot holes, thin characterizations, clarity of the prose, too much detail in some areas—whatever. And good luck!

Marketing and Promotion – By Steve Rush

At the end of September, I came across an article intriguingly titled, “51 Tips to Help Market Your Book” (link below). These tips, along with others identified by marketing experts, solidify the goal authors strive to attain: Getting noticed.

When asked to write about my own marketing experience and strategies, I read through the list and found 18 of the 51 tips applied to me. The first item listed is of utmost importance, and the other 50 hang on it. “Practice good marketing, promotion, and social media engagement by learning and meeting the needs of readers and followers.” Trial and error have taught me which tips are worth the effort and expense when it comes to reaching my target audience. The key here is the word “target.” It’s a given that not everyone wants to read the stories we write. But how will book lovers and casual readers who do enjoy our genres and subgenres (our target), find our novels, novellas, and short stories among the millions published each year?

We need to promote ourselves in concert with marketing our stories. This draws attention to us as authors and shows potential buyers the worlds we’ve built with a premise they can’t resist, tempting them with something new and unforgettable.

The second tip suggests making a spreadsheet, what I call my to-do list, for each book accepted for publication. This list contains many specific marketing and promotion tasks—for example, writing blog posts, sending announcements to email lists, adding the new book to my website and Amazon Author pages, entering contests, sending Advance Review Copies (ARCs) to book reviewers, and printing bookmarks. And, the list evolves. Lately, I added “contacting book club organizers.”

The number of clicks in advertisements and opened emails provides one level of feedback, but the real measure of their success is, how do these efforts affect sales? Is the impact of advertising worth the expense? Impact is not exactly the same as revenue. One effort I consider a success was a CrimeReads advertisement for Kill Your Characters: Crime Scene Tips for Writers. The publisher emailed me with news of a sales spike. Did the royalties cover my expense? No. Was it worth it? Yes. The exposure and number of new readers made it worthwhile.

BookBub offers authors self-serve ad campaigns for promotion. I ran an ad campaign in 2023, set a budget, and selected an audience from fans of authors whose books are like mine. Success came in an above-average number of impressions from readers interested in my book. The results convinced me: BookBub campaigns work. (See editor’s note below.)

Last, I have found ARCs and influencers’ reviews beneficial in marketing and promotion. I post these outside “endorsements” on social media sites, in guest blogs, and to my email list. Attention-getting endorsements from fellow authors and publishing experts give my own promotion efforts a welcome boost.

The path to success begins when we write “The End,” use at least some of the 51 tips to market our books, and promote ourselves.

Here is the whole article, in case you missed it: “The Write Conversation: 51 Tips to Help Market Your Book” And, check out this info on authors’ experiences with paid advertising: “BookBub vs. Amazon vs. Facebook Ads: Authors Weigh In.” The respondents had all run campaigns on BookBub and most were authors from the best-selling book genre, romance.

Editor’s Note: Here’s an easy-to-follow, platform-neutral book marketing strategy from Kindlepreneur. It’s for self-published authors and is not linked to any of the three biggies: BookBub, Amazon, and Meta. While some authors report success with each of them, others report big spends and disappointing results. The outcome seems to depend on a) how much effort authors put into it, b) which platform they are most comfortable with, and c) serendipity. Let me know what your experience has been, and I’ll compile it in a follow-up. Thanks to Steve for getting this conversation rolling!

Editor’s Turn

Maybe you read about the 84-year-old Minnesota man recently identified as the perpetrator in a 1974 Wisconsin homicide case. Faced with DNA evidence of his guilt, he confessed. The latest attempt at analyzing his DNA was slowed because the man was an adoptee. But genealogical genetics got him, anyway.

Speaking of genealogy (were we?), I recently spent three days at the Central Texas Genealogical Society Library in Waco, county seat of McLennan County. It’s a city with a very checkered history, including many racial terror lynchings and, you’ll remember, the Branch Davidians. My four maternal great-grandparents lived there. (Ask me about the murders in that family sometime. I know of three separate ones.)

In Waco, I found this moving memorial in a lovely park along the Brazos River. I couldn’t get the whole thing into the shot at anything like a readable size. It was quite memorable.