Category: Mystery
Oh, No! Oh, Yes!

Oh, No! Oh, Yes!

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In this issue:

  1. Dark & Cold?
  2. New Audiobook Edition in Progress
  3. My Appearance at the Tucson Festival of Books

Dark and Cold? What Happened?

Last Monday, doctors at Banner University Medicine in Tucson, Arizona replaced my wife Kay’s right shoulder. On Wednesday night—actually at 2AM on Thursday morning—thankfully, sleep eluded her. She shook me out of a sound slumber. “Gene, we have no power!” Oh, crap. It was thirty-nine degrees outside, and our heat, both electric and diesel, depends on either external resort (“city” or “shore”) power or our motorhome’s battery power.

I scrambled out of bed at the rear of our forty-three-foot bus and headed toward the cockpit to diagnose the problem. Stumbling out of my sleepy stupor, I noticed the panel said “low battery.” Warning lights flashed. So did an instant headache. We were likely less than an hour from draining (and probably ruining) about two-thousand-dollars worth of deep-cycle “house” batteries that power the entire coach.

That’s when I remembered the screw-up that caused this situation.

NEVER

ALLOW

THE FOLLOWING

TO HAPPEN

IF YOU LIVE IN AN RV

(OR ON A BOAT)!

The previous afternoon, I prepared a late lunch. It was chilly outside. Even though we’re in the SW Arizona desert, we’re at almost 3,000 feet of elevation here south of Tucson. So, the temps are only in the forties and fifties during the day here in January, and a lot colder at night.

Our diesel boiler (furnace) provides central heat (and hot water on demand). It is powered either by “shore” power (110VAC) or our house battery bank (12VDC). It was too cold for our two rooftop heat pumps to be effective. They’re powered by either shore power or our diesel generator, but that requires battery power to get started, too (although separate unaffected “chassis” batteries).

We often run an electric space heater, too (also driven by shore power or generator) to ease the burden on the far more costly diesel boiler. Plus, the boiler burns about a liter of diesel per hour during the coldest times, which we use instead of propane for heat.

We were nice and cozy that previous afternoon. I toasted a ciabatta bun in the kitchen’s electric toaster oven. At the same time, I reheated a wonderful vegan pasta dish in the microwave. The power flickered. Oops! I then realized I was operating three very power-hungry 110VAC appliances all at the same time. Dumb! In an RV, anyway.

But after a brief flicker, like a momentary brown-out, all appeared to be okay. I immediately turned off the space heater to finish heating my lunch. I figured our automatic (electrical) load-shedding feature on our electrical management system just did its thing with only a slight hiccup. NOPE! But on we went with our lives.

What really happened? I had blown an obscure breaker, and instead of then providing all the power in the coach (one fridge, two freezers, lights, TV, home theater system, space heater, humidifier, etc.) from resort or shore power, which is normal, all now depended on our bank of house batteries for their power! That’s fine for short durations like a few hours when necessary, when shore power isn’t available, but longer term, like last week? The bus gobbles batteries dry and sends them to the scrap heap!

Our inverter normally translates 12VDC battery power into clean 110VAC household power from either shore power or battery power. Our 110VAC (household) appliances didn’t care where the power was coming from.

It wasn’t until 2AM Thursday, when our batteries had been drawn down to dangerously low levels, did I realize my mistake. So, I trundled outside, shivering in my pajamas and slippers, with my trusty headlamp to locate the breaker on the inverter itself in the “basement” (a storage compartment underneath the motorhome), pushed the emergency breaker to reset it, and everything came back online as it was supposed to.

STUPID! I will plan to hear about my mistake from now to eternity. I deserve it.

I checked the fluid levels in the batteries the following day to ensure I did no permanent damage. They’re okay, but another hour or so of drawing them down into oblivion? That would have made for a very expensive battery replacement fiasco. As soon as I had reset the inverter’s breaker, the battery charging system automatically started pounding a recharge into the four huge depleted house batteries.

Catastrophe averted! Narrowly. Such is “la vita!”

FYI, TWO Audiobook Editions of Rogue’s Gallery Coming

I’m seriously considering something that is not business-as-usual in audiobook production.

From my last newsletter, you’ll recall I’ve just published my latest heart-pounding Aubrey Greigh Mystery, Rogue’s Gallery this summer in Kindle and paperback editions. I’m now narrating its audiobook edition, and hope to publish and distribute it to Audible, Amazon, and Apple by early this summer. But here’s the thing.

What would you think of an “enhanced” or “theatrical” version of this audiobook mystery? I envision offering such an edition separately in addition to the straight narrated version. This enhanced edition would include selected sound effects and music. I think such an edition might offer a more engaging listener experience, and would really appreciate hearing what you think of this idea.

Allow me to illustrate. Below is an audio sample of what I call a “theatrical” edition (do you have a better name for such an offering? I’m all ears!):

Enhanced audiobook track (Chapter One of Rogue’s Gallery):

I really would like to know what you think. Would an extra offering like this enhanced audiobook edition be of interest to you? To other audiobook aficionados, do you think?

Besides, I’m having an absolute blast producing this!

Personal Appearance at TFOB (Tucson Festival of Books)

If you’re not aware, the TFOB comprises:

  • The 3rd or 4th largest book festival in the country (in the world, maybe?),
  • Typically >100,000 attendees (free admission) over one weekend,
  • Dozens of ticketed venues (presentations & moderated panels),
  • Millions of dollars raised for the community (non-profit),
  • More than 200 year-round volunteers.

This two-day festival takes place in the middle of March each year and sprawls across the University of Arizona campus in Tucson. This year, I am honored to have been invited to speak as part of a moderated three-member panel of mystery authors on Saturday, March 15th.

So, if you’re in the ‘hood, you’re invited. Tickets are free, but advanced reserved tickets are advised and are available one week prior. See the festival website for more and schedule info HERE.

On the next day, Sunday the sixteenth, I’ll be participating in the festival’s “Indie Pavilion,” that is, a meet and greet of independently published authors, where I’ll be selling and signing my sixteen published books for all you mystery fans and aspiring writers. This will be fun.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be speaking during the moderated panel, so I thought I’d use this forum to try out a few talking points. Care to weigh in on which ones you think I ought to prioritize?

My front line comments: “I love writing mysteries that are entertaining, authentic, and socially relevant. My mysteries are inspired by events that have occurred to me during my life. And I’ve been blessed with a pretty darn interesting one. Yes, this is most certainly driven by my passion for the allure of the obscure. I like to think I offer something in the pages of my books that readers are not likely to have personally encountered, like I have, nor maybe not have encountered in other mysteries.”

I plan to ask for a show of hands, and I ask you now:

  • How many of you grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and yet worked near the top of a hundred-billion-dollar multinational tech corporation for a time whose boss got indicted for insider trading?
  • How many of you have had your life threatened and were stalked for months after reluctantly firing 422 of your 1,013 employees? I’m not a fan of firearms, but I borrowed a loaded shotgun from a neighbor that I kept at my bedside that summer. We moved out of state, just in case. After that, I retired at age fifty-eight after thirty-two years with a full pension. I was not the guy I had become.
  • How many of you have relatives and close friends who have been members of the US intelligence community, including one high-level executive at the NSA and another who was an “air pirate” who flew “farm equipment” (wink) and “support personnel” (still winking) into third-world countries most of us have never heard of?
  • How many of you have owned a live-aboard sailboat that once was used as a safe house for Soviet defectors during the cold war, one of whom was married on its foredeck in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor?
  • How many of you have strolled the infamous Tokyo fish market in a $600 camel-hair overcoat at 4AM and helped a little fish monger pick up a spilled wheelbarrow of live eels after bumping into him and causing the spill? That coat was never the same!
  • How many of you lived on a boat in the Florida Keys and Eastern Caribbean for years and faithfully listened to the piracy report every morning at 0700 hours on marine radio channel 69, so you knew where not to go next, or only with a buddy boat, for safety?
  • How many of you lived in San Francisco’s Hashbury district in 1969 as a rebel without a clue counseling draftees during the Tet offensive in the Viet Nam war when a thousand kids my age were getting killed each week? That’s when I got my draft notice, by the way, and enlisted in the US Coast Guard.
  • How many of you have had thirteen motorcycle accidents before age 18 and experienced relocating a house’s porch with a big-ass Buick, destroying an entire alley, and running that same car into a tree at 50 MPH in a drug-addled state? Unforgettable… I’m told.  
  • How many of you have almost died in the bowels of a shipwreck at a depth of 120 feet of seawater seven miles off Key West when your SCUBA equipment got entangled in overhead wreckage in a tight passageway?
  • How many of you have experienced a free-fall skydive from 14,500 feet and seen the majestic curvature of the earth splayed out below you?
  • How many of you have traveled in a forty-three foot bus for ten years, living in forty-plus states for a few weeks to a few months at a time?
  • How many of you have smoked a joint with an awkward teenage Bill Cosby long before he became famous (then, infamous), and long before I became a respectable, high-functioning career alcoholic? I’ve now been sober for thirteen years.

This is just a sampling of life experiences that inspire me to write quirky mysteries with flawed characters who entertain you with believable situations that baffle, mystify, or make you laugh or cry. And you’ll wonder, “what if that were me?” I’d love to share at least a few of these anecdotes during my panel discussion, but at least I got to share them all with YOU.

One other important pearl of wisdom I’d share with you? NEVER try to out-drink your Japanese translator starting on the Shinkansen (bullet train) between Tokyo and Hamamatsu and later at the hotel, especially if you’re swilling down ninety-eight-degree (cheap) Saki. You will lose if you are “gaijin” (non-Japanese). No mystery, there.

I am growing excited to meet some new mystery fans at TFOB, and maybe also sell and sign a few books! This festival is one of the reasons we’re in Tucson this winter!

So, until later, and wherever…

Gene

Yes, this photo of ‘yours truly’ is more than a few years old. I’m performing a Native American style flute of my own making–one of my first (and best). But I thought this image befit the background theme of my latest mystery novel: ex-carnival entertainers who, despite their checkered past, like me, have a second chance in life. What they do with it, like the recovering alcoholic in this image, is for you to discover within the pages of this classic locked-room mystery with more than a few weird twists. Enjoy Rogue’s Gallery: Beyond All Reason!
A New Mystery to Solve!

A New Mystery to Solve!

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Is this your next read?

Good news for Aubrey Greigh Mystery fans:

Rogue’s Gallery—is now available!

By the way, authors live and die by reviews. So, if you read any of my books, please consider leaving a line or three of what you thought, and don’t forget to give it a star rating (preferably 5 stars!).

I’m celebrating! This is my third book this year. I should say “our” third book. I wrote two of those books (Sam Travis Adventures) with my writing partner, Tom Kasprzak. Plus, you can get Lethal Game as an audiobook (more to come). Still, three books in one year is a personal best. What’s amazing is that they just get better and better (so my pre-publication readers tell me).

Below, I offer you a sample of Rogue’s Gallery: Beyond All Reason. This scene takes place more than a few years in the future in a high-security apartment inside Chicago’s near southwest loop—the scene of a heinous murder:

Detective Chance McQuillan—Q—once more questioned the wisdom of asking her captain for the lead in this case. Was it because of her pathological hatred of anything that smelled like that fake paranormal shit? When she was twelve, a carnival fortune teller scared her so badly, she still remembered that awful feeling. She was an emotional dumpster fire back then looking for… well, she had no idea what she was looking for. Who does, at that age? But that… gypsy, that… man! It was like he made love to his beliefs and tried his damned level-best to seduce her to do so, too. That total creep show had stained her. Forever. And her own bastard of a father dismissed it all. Q hated gypsies and carnies, and knew that to be irrational. That’s where she thought all paranormal shit came from. Only when they’re around. And now this bullshit. It was all crap, anyway.

* * *

Halfway through his second shift the night before, Jerry Hannafin had received an S.O.S. signal from Ms. Schift in 2613. Mac, Q’s partner, kept his mouth shut. She now grilled this oaf at Wolf Point East’s combination front desk and security station. This rent-a-cop desk clerk seemed nice enough, even capable. But he showed obvious signs of discomfort around real cops. Not too surprising. She stared at the summary of this hump’s record on her WristPad. Nothing major. Still, it surprised her they even let this guy carry a weapon. But Wolf Point’s ‘brand’ was security and discretion. They talked as he led the way to the scene on twenty-six.

“All I got, detective. I got the automated call at 10:16 PM. When Ms. Schift mashes that button on her remote, her system also calls you guys. I got up there fast as I could. Pounded and pounded on her door, see. But she don’t answer. And my master electronic key don’t work, either. I get real worried. Then I get a call from Mr. Leibowitz in 2720. Says he heard what sounded like a gunshot. Now, I’m real worried. So I calls the fire department thinkin’… well, I dunno. Ain’t no kickin’ down that door.” He nodded off to his left. 

Q looked him up and down as they stood in the wide hallway outside of Jolina Schift’s apartment. The door was now damaged beyond repair. “Mr. Hannafin, is it unusual for you not to have master key access to apartments in the building?” They entered the apartment as they talked.

“Supposed to work. It’s in the H.O.A. bylaws, see. For situations just like this, ya know? Ms. Schift, she was a real piece a work. Din’t trust nobody. Who’s got three honest-ta-God deadbolts? And the C.F.D. guys find this.” He nodded toward blood pools, spray, and spatters extending from one side of the kitchen to the other, ending with the outline of a corpse near a black luncheon bar. The M.E. had long-since removed the body. A bright yellow numbered card labeled ‘bloody weapon: knife’ lay near the white outline. Jerry muttered, “Hey, I’m not in trouble here, am I?”

Q sauntered from room to room. Stopped in the master bedroom and Mac followed. Tapped her on the shoulder while reading the crime scene report, and pointed at the twelve-foot ceiling. Neither Mac nor Q had spotted a single bullet hole at the joint between the ceiling and fancy crown molding. But the Crime Scene Mapper—the C.S.M. device—had spotted it. 

“Does she ever have visitors?”

Jerry said, “Hey, dunno, ‘kay? We monitor the lobby and the desk. Nobody what don’t have no pass key gets in. And nobody gets by me what I don’t recognize ‘em, see? They come to visit somebody in the building, I call up and get the high sign or send ‘em packin’, ‘kay? Nobody ever come to see Ms. Schift. At least so’s I know. Not on my shifts, anyways. And I’m here six nights a week.”

“You got a record, Jerry?”

“Look, I din’t do nothin’ wrong here. Are we done?”

“Yes, sir. For now. We appreciate your time.”

* * *

Mac continued to study the crime scene team’s analysis on his WristPad with Q looking on. He scratched his head and said, “The report says no prints or D.N.A. other than the victim’s. No echoes of any other presence detected by the C.S.M. for the six hours prior, either. But from footprint trace energy, it appeared she first went from room to room. Like she was searching. And then she scrambled on her hands and knees from the bedroom to the kitchen after firing a single shot, but she left her pistol in the bedroom. The bloody knife near the body?” He nodded toward the empty slot in the knife block on the counter. “Looks like she grabbed a big-ass knife, from the width of the slot it came from, and defended herself. Then, she cuts out her own tongue with that same knife? What the fuck, Q?” 

That was the C.S.M. device’s analysis during the six-hour window preceding the time the crime scene team deployed their machine. Its sensors picked up and recorded any presence or motion anywhere in or around the scene, including D.N.A., fingerprints and footprint motion tracers with timestamps. The C.S.M.’s technology still baffled Q, but it was reliable. She said, “And the report also pinpoints time of death at 10:30 PM, plus or minus five. So Ms. Schift was the only person in her entire apartment during that time. Fires a shot in desperation at her bedroom ceiling, apparently at some invisible presence before fleeing to the kitchen?”

Mac squinted his eyes and looked at Q slantwise while they strolled through the sumptuous living room. He expected to get his nose tweaked for his next words. “At least she was the only human presence in this well-fortified kill box.”

“Oh, not you too, Mac.” She hated that kind of trash talk. Brought back those ugly childhood memories. 

“Hey, just sayin’. What now?” She smirked. He muttered, “A seance?” He ducked away from her. Didn’t want to get slugged. 

Q snorted. “Yeah, let’s go report that plan to the captain. Guess we call this a suicide, time being, ’til we get some more evidence. Gotta be about the evidence.”

“I don’t believe she didn’t have help, either, Q. For now, the answer is beyond any reasonable explanation we got in hand.”

“We’re done here. You know the drill, Mac: background, known associates, personal habits, vices, enemies…. Head back to the nine-nine and dig in. Gotta be something. Let’s start by connecting the Rune case to this one. Too frickin’ similar to be a any kind of coincidence. Suicide victims cutting out their own tongues is odd enough. But when two do that within three days of each other? And with no rational explanation?”

Mac registered a surprised expression. “Where are you headed?”

“I need to run an errand.” Q was conflicted. One person who had researched and debunked at least some of this paranormal shit was the eccentric man she shared a bed with. Another perplexing case almost eight years ago involved voodoo, and Greigh’s research was fundamental in solving that case. Smelled a lot like this one. Now, as much as she hated to admit it, she shared Mac’s frustration. They were no closer to solving this mystery than before this second body had dropped. Yeah, she’d ask Greigh’s opinion on this clusterfuck. Her husband always had an opinion. He called them theories or hypotheses. Opinions. Plus, she worried about her objectivity anywhere near this paranormal crap. But first, she’d talked to an old friend who had also helped out on that damn voodoo case.

Check out Rogue’s Gallery: Beyond All Reason, especially if you’re already an Aubrey Greigh and Chance McQuillan fan!

So, until later, and wherever…

Gene

Yes, this photo of yours truly is more than a few years old. I’m performing a flute of my own making–one of my first (and best). But I thought this image befit the background theme of this new book: ex-carnival entertainers who, despite their checkered past, have a second chance in life. What they do with it, like the recovering alcoholic in this image, is for you to discover within the pages of this classic locked-room mystery with more than a few weird twists. Enjoy Rogue’s Gallery: Beyond All Reason!
Hurry! New Novel AND a Free Audiobook?

Hurry! New Novel AND a Free Audiobook?

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THE THIRD AND MOST EXCITING SAM TRAVIS ADVENTURE YET IS HERE!

PRE-ORDER NOW FOR AUTO-DELIVERY THIS SUNDAY.

WHY BUY HERE NOW ?

  • 25% PRICE DISCOUNT (Kindle edition)
  • DELIVERED INSTANTLY (to all your devices) on Sunday
  • CHANCE TO WIN A FREE AUDIOBOOK (of Lethal Game):
    • Just send your pre-order receipt email to gjurrens@yahoo.com before Sunday, September 15
    • Your odds of winning are VERY GOOD!

Order Yours Now. HERE

Just Three Bucks!

(for a limited time)

Why not pre-order right now for your next read in three days, but also to enter a high-probability drawing for a free audiobook, a $15 value. Just click HERE NOW!

Thanks in advance!

Gene & Tom

Representing authors GK Jurrens
& Tom Kasprzak

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