Hi Y’all

I’m new here and decided it would be fun to introduce myself by telling you a tale about a writing coincidence I had some years ago that still gives me chills.

For the fourth book in my first series, Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries, I needed help with a murder I had in mind. The premise for the Widow’s Walk League is that the husbands of women in a ladies’ walking group are being murdered one by one. I wanted to kill off one of the husbands at Woodies on the Wharf, an annual event in Santa Cruz where I live.

I had an idea about how he should meet his end, but I wasn’t sure if it was feasible so I contacted the president of the local woodies club to ask for advice. I presented my idea for how the victim should die and, once he was convinced that I was writing fiction and not a murderer plotting a real killing, he was eager to help.

 We met for coffee. I came armed with questions; he brought diagrams, photos, and a wrench. He not only explained how easy it would be to use a wrench on the undercarriage of the car to reverse the transmission, he had a photo of the make, model, and year of the woodie to use and told me where it should be parked on the wharf so my victim would plunge into the bay and sink to the bottom so quickly, he wouldn’t be able to escape the vehicle.

Now for the shivery part. A recuring character in the series is a police officer named Dave. He’s my protagonist’s buddy—you have to have some law enforcement connection in a cozy mystery—who has talked himself into a job as the police department ombudsman after losing an eye in a shootout. He’s based on a real friend also named Dave who lost his eye in a shootout while on duty. Remember that for a minute.

The book came out a week before Woodies on the Wharf so I decided to take a copy to the helpful woodies club president. I also decided it would be fun to see who was parked in the deadly parking space and tell him to be careful because things hadn’t worked out well for the last man who parked there.

As we introduced ourselves, I noted that he had the same first name as my murder victim. When I jested about being careful, he said nothing scared him because he was a retired homicide detective and had seen it all.

“Where did you work?” I asked.

“San Jose,” he replied.

“One of the characters in my book is based on a real police officer who worked for SJPD until he lost an eye in a shootout,” I said.

He snorted, “You must mean Dave. I was with him the night that happened. I told him you never  pop your head up to look over a fence when pursuing an armed suspect, but he didn’t listen to me.”

Writing is so much fun, and when things like this happen, it’s even more entertaining.