My Blog

The following was posted on LinkedIn by J. Kroll:

I’m putting this up because many of us have opinions about America, the Epstein files, Donald Trump, wars in the Middle East, wars in Ukraine, being pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, and many other issues.

I don’t mind people having opinions. What I do mind is when people are rude about someone else’s opinion or start calling posts “stupid,” etc.

If you don’t like a post, simply ignore it. You can also mute it, restrict the person, or remove them from your social media. There are always options.

We all have opinions. Some people are vocal, others choose not to share theirs. Either way, let’s try to be respectful.
I wish everyone would keep her wise comments in mind.

Over the last four or five years, I’ve observed quite the opposite: vicious comments on websites, widely circulated emails, text messages, and even key speakers at writers’ conferences. As a result, I left several groups where I had previously enjoyed the camaraderie and educational benefits. Such vitriol even raises its ugly head at some conferences.

I do NOT care what others believe. As Rodney King said, “Can’t we all just get along?”

Thank you. Please feel free to share.

George

Jeff Zolfarelli began his career in public safety when he joined the San Leandro Police Department as a patrol officer. He spent time as a K-9 officer and a SWAT member. After ten years, Jeff transferred to the San Leandro Fire Department, where he attained the rank of Captain.
He ended his twenty-five years in fire service as the Deputy Fire Chief of Operations for the Livermore Pleasant Fire Department.

Jeff teaches in the fire technology program within the Chabot-Las Positas College District. \

Jeff holds an Associate’s degree in Administration of Justice, a Bachelor’s degree in Business, and a Master’s degree in Emergency Operations and Planning. He is also a United States Air Force Reserve veteran, serving from 1970 to 1977.

He enjoys long-distance motorcycle rides (especially with George Cramer), gardening, and model trains. A native of California, he resides in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife.

Two years ago, he and his associate, Al Rager, updated and revised Fire Behavior and Combustion Process used widely in fire education and for their course. This book had been out of print for a long time.

In all my life, the idea of writing, writing about anything for school projects, tests, reports, has been an often put-off subject. Now, mind you, I am not an illiterate individual; I hold three degrees. Yet I never saw myself as a good writer.

Currently employed by a community college district, I have taught a tech fire science course on the combustion and behavior process of fire for 35 years. I found a need to have a more current book on the subject. During the span of my teaching this course, I had changed the text three times, and I very much preferred the current book.

Well, the textbook I used for my community college course was well overdue for a second edition, and the author had passed on to the great library in the sky. The family, having sold the rights to another publishing company, had no interest in continuing the existing publication. The impact on my course eventually led to the option to scan books and add them to the course. Thus saving the student the expense of purchasing a copy.

However, this did not satisfy the desire to have an updated second edition of a book now 25 years in print. Contact with the publishing company that held the rights to the book was drawn out, and to save time, let me say that my fellow professor and I, with the assistance of our program director, were able to persuade the publishing company to publish a second edition. The catch was that we needed to find someone willing to take on this challenge.

Well, always being one to try new ideas and realizing that often we are drawn to that which we fear most, I accepted this challenge and began an 18-month process to complete a second edition of the book. This was accepted with the help of another professor who taught the course with me. He would write the odd chapters, and I would write the even chapters.

The process starts with a meeting with an executive editor and associate members. Now, in the 21st century, and with them on the East Coast and us on the West Coast, this was accomplished via the now well-worn online video meeting process. Mind you, this process was begun in 2015, a period well after the great lockdown, when all courses were held online for 24 months. I had mastered this process and was able to present, share, and copy whatever was necessary.

The first vetting meeting was cordial and well-received by both sides. They were invited to allow a second meeting for us to show them the course we teach and how the book is an integral part. A date was set, and the meeting occurred. With the explanation that we felt the other book on the same subject was what we termed a ‘four-year book,’ designed for those seeking a four-year degree, such as engineers, investigators, and inspectors. We wanted a two-year book for those entering the fire service at the firefighter level. Showing them how we weaved the chapters into the course and how entry-level firefighters best benefited from this text, they agreed to let us rewrite the book.

The following process included signing contracts and setting up a schedule for completion. A 24-month deadline to production was agreed upon, and we began the process. What I thought was going to be a writing session, followed by submission and printing, was far from what was in store. We were assigned a managing editor who would set the schedule and then another editor who would read what we had written and submit back corrections, additions, or changes they felt needed. This includes the explanation of what we were writing as the subject matter was not clear to you. Meetings were often held online, which led to a great relationship-building process that was educational for both sides and at times quite humorous.

As an avid Mac user, I was told the work needed to be in MS Word, which meant I needed to add that to my laptop. I immediately went on a steep learning curve to accomplish this and adjust to WORD terms and processes. The most humorous request was that the book be written at a reading level of eight. Now, keep in mind I am not from the academic world. I worked in operations, boots on the ground management. So another steep climb was conquered. The course is at a community college level, and the book was written at a reading level of thirteen. We had a few rounds and rounds of sessions over what level we would write the book. It was agreed that, as subject matter experts, we would determine when the book had a reading level of thirteen and when we could lower it to a reading level of eight.

Following that, the adventure grew ever more rewarding. I always believed that when you begin studying for a higher position, you improve your level of knowledge and ability to deliver a better product. The time spent researching and updating the information in the first edition, plus the addition of current and new equipment, policies, procedures, and apparatus, led to an increased understanding for me in the classroom.

During the 18-month process, we reached out to fellow firefighters and subject matter experts to put together a book that held on to the heart of what the original author wrote and brought meaning and understanding to the student who would be using it for the time to come.

We also learned a great deal from other subject matter experts who were asked to review our work from around the country. This gave us the broad five-thousand-foot and ground-level views of what the industry was experiencing and how to best address the subject at hand.

It was at times a very stressful experience, learning new formats, understanding a new writing language, and at times desperately holding on to what I truly believed was best for the book, despite consideration for alterations from our editors.

I would do this again, perhaps. I can say that I have been asked to review other books from the publisher and have done so, drawing on the insight I have gained from my writing experience.

Fire Behavior and Combustion Process – Can be purchased on Amazon or at JB Learning.com

You may contact Jeff at: jeffzolfarelli@gmail.com

M.E. Proctor was born in Brussels and lives in Texas. She’s the author of the Declan Shaw detective mysteries. The first book, Love You Till Tuesday, came out from Shotgun Honey. Catch Me on a Blue Day is the next installment in the series. She’s the author of a short story collection, Family and Other Ailments, and the co-author of a retro-noir novella, Bop City Swing. Her fiction has appeared in Vautrin, Tough, Rock and a Hard Place, Bristol Noir, Mystery Tribune, Reckon Review, and Black Cat Weekly, among others. She’s a Shamus and Derringer short story nominee.

Catch Me on a Blue Day
“For Ella and all the innocents slain by soulless men.”

It’s the dedication of the book on the Salvadoran civil war that retired reporter Carlton Marsh was writing before he committed suicide.
A shocking death. Marsh had asked Declan Shaw to come to Old Mapleton, Connecticut, to help him with research. He looked forward to Declan’s visit: “See you at cocktail time, a fine whiskey’s waiting.” They talked on the phone a few hours before the man put a bullet in his brain.
Now Declan stands in the office of the local police chief. The cop would prefer to see him fly back to Houston. He’s never dealt with a private detective, but everybody knows they are trouble. If only there weren’t so many unanswered questions around Marsh’s death … the haunting first three chapters of his book, and that dedication to Ella, a girl whose murder thirty years ago brought the town to its knees.
In Catch Me on a Blue Day, Declan is far from his regular Texas stomping grounds. He’s off balance in more ways than one, and the crimes he uncovers are of a magnitude he could not foresee.
Between the sins of an old New England town and the violence of 1980s El Salvador. And the links between the two.

Book link:
Catch Me on a Blue Day is available in eBook and paperback formats.
On Amazon at  https://www.amazon.com/Catch-Blue-Declan-Shaw-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B0FR3DWYGD/

Five years in the making – Catch Me on a Blue Day is the second book in the Declan Shaw PI series and came about in a very different way than its predecessor, Love You Till Tuesday. It is both a book of urgency and careful planning, if these two apparently discordant characteristics can coexist.

I started playing with the plot in the summer of 2020. A few years earlier, I had spent some time in a small town on the Connecticut coast, and it struck me as: 1. Pretty, 2. Traditional, 3. Claustrophobic. The perfect setting for a cozy mystery, but I’m a contrarian, so I knew that if I ever used the place in a story, it would turn dark, very dark.

My PI, Declan Shaw, is based in Houston. I needed to give him a good excuse to leave Texas. Something like an old friend asking him for help with research for his book, but when he gets there, the friend is dead. Suicide. Why would the man commit suicide? I made the friend an investigative journalist and war zone correspondent, and the plot beats started coming together. They required digging into historical events, which I spent most of the summer of 2020 doing, and setting up a tight timeline and character bios. I ended with a pile of documentation (official reports, newspaper articles, pictures) and a twenty-page single-spaced prep document. This isn’t how I normally work. I usually start with an idea and a vague outline that can carry the story for a few chapters, and I research as I go. I’m well aware it isn’t the most efficient process. In this case, I needed to have my ducks in a row before sitting down to write, or I would get lost in too many rabbit holes ever to see the light of day again.

By the time I was ready to type the first line, I was so eager to go that the need was almost physical.

Cue the ‘urgency’. For two months, all I could think of was Catch Me on a Blue Day. The title popped as soon as I wrote these lines of dialogue (text condensed for this post). Declan Shaw is talking:
“In my business, you learn that things are rarely what they seem.”
“Are things rarely what they seem in love too?” Isabel said.
“Catch me on a blue day and I’ll say yes. Love is often not what it seems.”
“And on a non-blue day?”
“There are accommodations.”

I must have been hard to live with while the book took shape—distracted, absent-minded, ruminating, impatient, obsessive. Do you remember the fall of 2020? We were locked up. No travel. No school. Doomsday around us. Echoes from the writing community were bleak. The needle on the mood-meter oscillated between gloom and frenzy—”I can’t write” or “All I can do is write”, and sometimes both at the same time.
I belonged to the latter group. I wrote like a woman possessed.

After typing The End, I wasn’t too sure where I was. I also had doubts about what the trance produced. (Anybody who, like me, rebuild the world in college at three in the morning will be familiar with the feeling. Before daybreak, we’re all geniuses. Then the sun comes up.) It seemed like a sensible decision to set the book aside until the fever abated. It took six months before I dared look at it again. Editing, tweaking, beta readers, more editing, followed by two years in the freezer. Other projects took center stage. Short stories, new book ideas, a collection, and Love You Till Tuesday, scheduled for release, were the first Declan Shaw stories to see the light of day.

Time can be frustrating in the publishing business, but one benefit of letting years tick by between drafts is that the material feels new, even foreign, as if the story had been written by someone else. The biggest obstacle in editing one’s own work is familiarity; it causes blindness. You simply can’t see what’s wrong; objectivity is impossible. After three years, ‘kill your darlings’ isn’t daunting anymore. By then, the darlings have long been pushing the daisies. Trimming, cutting, chopping, and whacking don’t draw blood; they’re just good housekeeping.

Did I change a lot between drafts? Some. The story ended up being tighter and faster. I also balanced the points of view between Declan and the three women who have a major role in the story. The casual reader may not notice, but the dance of POVs lends a rhythm to the narrative, much like a musical progression (three chapters in Declan’s POV, one in Isabel’s, three in Declan’s, one in Jean’s, and so on). I also indulged in my favorite plot break: sticking a flashback smack in the middle. It’s the kind of play with structure that does not come naturally in early drafts.

It is a prequel – Catch Me on a Blue Day is the second Declan Shaw mystery, but chronologically it takes place before Love You Till Tuesday. Something that matters more to the writer (keeping a tight rein on the character’s bio) than to the readers. The books can be read separately. Tone-wise, the stories strike different chords. Tuesday is structured like a classic procedural; it starts with cops at the crime scene and is entirely in the here and now. In Blue Day, a crime is suspected, but the evidence is circumstantial, and the roots of evil go back thirty years. It’s a cold case with aftershocks in the present. Declan is also in unfamiliar territory, far from Texas, among strangers, and dealing with the sequels of a serious injury. He’s definitely less sure-footed and decisive than usual, and it throws the case off kilter.

The cover image – The woods of Connecticut, the jungles of El Salvador, and the Atlantic in a storm. The only blue is in the title, on purpose.

How do our readers contact you:
Twitter: @MEProctor3,

Facebook: Martine Elise Proctor
Website: https://www.shawmystery.com
Substack: https://meproctor.substack.com