The Release of NO ONE SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL

Today we’re thrilled to announce the release of Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries #2 – NO ONE SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL, our first series novella. *opens champagne and tosses confetti*

I’ve been asked many times why we wrote a novella instead of sticking to our annual hardcover release schedule. In the end, the answer was twofold. We wanted to give our readers content while they waited the eleven months between DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT and A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH. I’m a series reader myself, and I know how hard it can be to get involved in a series and then have to wait six or twelve months for the next installment. We wanted to fill that gap with a short case that falls between the longer and more complex cases in the novels. But we also wanted to introduce the series to new readers who might be willing to try a new author in a short piece, and who might then be interested in continuing the series with us. It’s an experiment of sorts—instead of putting our money and effort into more classic marketing methods, we decided that the best form of marketing was series content because that was what our readers really wanted. As an added bonus, for the first time, the first three chapters of A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH are included to give you a taste of what’s to come in the series.

Huge thanks go to Ann who bravely volunteered to do all the formatting required (and it was A LOT!) to get the novella into proper electronic publishing format. It looks great, and I had absolutely nothing to do with it. :)

We wanted to include a sneak peek at the novella with the first chapter below (please don't mind the lack of indents; HTML likes to strip them all out...). Enjoy!

NO ONE SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL

  CHAPTER ONE: EXPOSURE

Exposure: a measure of the amount of light hitting the surface of a light-sensitive photographic material while creating a latent image.

Friday, 1:37 p.m.

Boston University, School of Medicine

Boston, Massachusetts

Massachusetts State Police Trooper Leigh Abbott hesitated at the open door to the laboratory. Her gaze instantly found her onetime partner—Boston University forensic anthropologist Dr. Matthew Lowell—huddled with his graduate students around an examination table across the room. Tall and dark, his physique spoke of long hours spent at the oars out on the Charles River, and he stood a full head above his students, except long, lanky Paul Layne. The discussion was too quiet for Leigh to hear distinct words, but there was a thread of remorse in Kiko’s tone, followed by cool logic in Matt’s. Between Juka and Paul, she caught a glimpse of smooth ivory bones on the stainless steel table. The group was hard at work, examining human remains recovered from the charnel house beneath Boston’s historic Old North Church.

Guilt coiled with anticipation in her gut. It had only been a few weeks since she’d first interrupted their work to pull them into a case. And yet here she was, proverbial hat in hand, once again.

She tapped two knuckles against the door frame.

Matt looked up from beneath the slightly shaggy hair that tended to fall into his eyes—a tactic she knew he employed to hide the twisted scar that ran from near his right eyebrow into his hairline. His expression warmed as their eyes met. “Trooper.” He raised two fingers to his temple in a brief salute, the formality of the gesture tempered by a wide grin. “This is a surprise.”

“Can’t I just drop by the lab?” As Leigh approached the group, Kiko Niigata, Matt’s senior grad student, stepped aside, making a place for her at the table. The group closed ranks around her, bringing her naturally into their circle. “What are you working on?”

“More remains from the charnel house,” Kiko, a slender woman with delicate Japanese features, pointed to the tiny, anatomically-arranged skeleton, topped by a blossom of skull fragments.

“It’s a newborn baby who probably died during childbirth, possibly along with its mother.” Juka Petrović, stocky and solid, with the dark coloring of his Bosnian ancestors, gave her a short nod of greeting and a small smile. Always restrained, Juka’s acknowledgement was the equivalent of the exuberant Paul greeting her with a trumpet fanfare.

“What happened to the skull?” In her peripheral vision, Leigh could see Paul’s expression of cocky expectation, his gaze fixed on her face as if trying to read her mind. He knows something’s up.

Matt picked up a tiny, gently curving piece of bone rimmed by ragged edges. “Nothing sinister. The fetal skull is actually comprised of forty-four unfused pieces. It’s the flexibility of the unfused skull that allows passage through the birth canal. Later in life, the progression of skull fusion helps us determine age.” He set the bone back into place in the human jigsaw puzzle. “Kiko’s going to do the skull reconstruction, and then try to give our baby a face.”

Kiko stroked an index finger over the curve of a tiny eye socket. “It’s going to be a tough reconstruction because of all the suture lines, but Matt’s willing to let me try.”

Matt patted her shoulder. “It always bothers you to work with kids.”

“And babies are the worst.” She frowned down at the table. “So many died so young back then.”

“Enough with the small talk,” Paul finally exploded, drawing everyone’s eyes. “You have a case for us, don’t you?”

Leigh’s gaze shot to Matt as confusion and then suspicion streaked across his face. She closed her eyes, guilt suddenly weighing heavily across her shoulders. She’d known there was a good chance Matt would misconstrue her arrival, especially considering the very private dinner they’d enjoyed last week—a dark restaurant, a good meal, fine wine, and a warm goodbye to end the evening. An evening his students and her sergeant were totally unaware of. “Well, now that you mention it . . .” she said weakly.

Matt stepped back from the exam table, his eyes narrowed as he considered her. “I should have seen it.”

“Seen what?”

“You.” One extended hand panned down, then back up her body. “This isn’t a social call. You’re in cop mode—hair tied back, plain business suit, sensible shoes, no jewelry.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest and Leigh felt the space between them grow wider even though neither had moved. “I guess I called it right after all. What have you got for us, Trooper?”

Guilt started to dissipate as irritation rose. She knew how well they worked together . . . once they struggled to get on the same page. “Now don’t go getting all out of sorts before I’ve even had a chance to bring you up to speed.”

“I knew it!” Paul fist-pumped the air. “We’re back, baby!”

“You really have a case for us?” Kiko asked. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. Interested?”

“Damn straight.” Paul did a quick-footed hip-hop shuffle. “We’re back to crime fighting. Cool!”

Leigh turned to Juka to find his gaze fixed on Matt, as if trying to temper his own response based on his supervisor’s. “Juka? Are you willing to help out?”

The young man shifted uncertainly from foot to foot. “I’d be interested in another case. But only if Matt is. This should be his decision.”

“I agree,” Kiko said. “I’m happy to get involved again, and I know we were a valuable part of the last investigation. But this has to be Matt’s call. He’s the one who’ll end up in court as the expert witness at the end of the case, not us.”

Taking a deep breath, Leigh faced Matt. His hazel eyes were fixed unblinkingly on hers and his face was carefully blank. “So . . . can I give you a rundown on my new case?” she asked cheerfully. She tried to match her words with an enticing smile, but it slipped when he continued to silently stare. “Matt?”

Instead of answering, he took her arm, drawing her toward his desk and out of earshot of his students. “You had this planned all along didn’t you? You were going to use my students as leverage to get me on board. You knew they’d be interested, especially Paul. And you banked on their enthusiasm to drag me in whether I wanted to or not.” He turned his back to the young people across the room, the only privacy afforded in the big, open lab. “Couldn’t you have trusted me with the truth? I don’t like games, Leigh. After all we’ve been through, I expect better from you than this.”

Her head bowed, she rubbed a hand over the back of her neck, trying to ease some of the prickly stress suddenly lodged there. “I’m not playing games. I just really need your help. And I felt desperate enough to try to force your hand.” She looked up when his hand closed over hers, pulling it from her neck to hold it in his, his thumb softly stroking over her skin.

“Then just ask me.”

His gentle tone had her blinking up at him in surprise. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Even after the last time?” Their successful first case together had brought them very much to the attention of the media and her superiors. But this wasn’t the essence of her question—there were personal elements in play here they were both aware of, even if they seldom spoke of them.

Her gaze flicked up over his dark hair where a new scar joined the others cruelly carved into his flesh. “You got shot, hit on the head, and then we were both nearly killed by a maniac. And all those victims. Not to mention I practically blackmailed you into coming on board in the first place by threatening to take the case to a rival anthropologist.”

“You didn’t blackmail me.”

She grimaced. “Actually, I did. I knew walking into the Old North that you didn’t like Trevor Sharpe, so he was my last ditch ace-in-the-hole if you wouldn’t sign on voluntarily.” She tried to tug her hand from his, surprised when he didn’t let go in disgust, and then shocked when he gave a short bark of laughter. “You’re not mad?”

“How can I be mad when it got us here? Even I have to admit you were very resourceful. You knew what you wanted and went after it using any and all means at your disposal.” He gave her hand a quick squeeze and then surreptitiously dropped it. “But next time, why don’t you just pick up the phone. By this point, we can cut right to the chase. Now, how about you fill us in?”

They rejoined the group, the three students watching them warily until Matt said, “Leigh’s going to tell us what she knows. Then I assume we need to get out to a site right away? They’re holding it for us?”

“Yes.” She loosed a long sigh, her first relaxed breath since setting eyes on her victim. She pulled her notepad from her blazer pocket, flipping it open to the relevant details. “A call came in over the tip line yesterday reporting a body dumped in Lawrence’s municipal landfill.”

“A call? From who?” Matt asked.

“People don’t usually leave their name on the tip line. Anonymity is the whole point. But it sounded like a girl.”

“How do you find a body in a landfill?” Juka asked. “That must be a huge endeavor.”

“Clearly they’ve found it or Leigh wouldn’t be here,” Matt interjected. “I’m betting they used a cadaver dog.”

“Got it in one. They searched all yesterday afternoon without one with no luck. So this morning they brought in two dogs. One found the body stuffed in a garbage bag near the surface.”

“I bet it blended right in like that.” Paul pushed a hand through his dark blond hair, making it stand up in small spikes. “Without the phone tip, it might never have been found.”

“It was clearly a recent addition, but would have been completely buried in another day or two. I was called in and I only needed one look to know that I needed you guys.”

“There’s no way the body’s in good shape,” Matt said. “Was the bag sealed?”

“It was until the local cops cut the bag open to confirm they had a victim.”

Matt winced. “We need to move fast then. Birds and bugs infest dump sites in a big way.”

“I left several officers with the remains, keeping the birds away.”

“Bugs are the bigger contaminant at this point.” Matt quickly moved through the lab, pulling equipment off shelves and out of drawers. “Get your field kits. Full Tyvek and sampling supplies.” He glanced at Leigh. “I’ll throw in coveralls for you too. You can’t go rooting through garbage dressed like that.” He paused for a moment, tapping an index finger against the benchtop. “I suspect a body bag might not do it for this one. Paul, you know that really big plastic transport container?”

“The one stored down the hall?”

“That’s the one. Get it. We’ll need it to hold the body bag.” He turned back to Leigh. “Call in a morgue van. If we transport the body in my SUV, I’ll never get the smell out.”

“They’re already on alert and waiting for my call. And you’re right. I don’t think a body bag will do it.”

Matt stopped short, glancing back over his shoulder at her. “How bad is it?”

Leigh had spent the last hour trying to forget what she’d seen inside that plastic bag. “I’d use the word ‘soup’ but then I might never eat lunch again.”

Matt nodded as if this was what he expected, and continued gathering his things and stuffing them into a backpack. “The body won’t necessarily have been there long. Heat produced by landfill sites combined with warm weather and possible direct sunlight would turn the bag into an oven, speeding up decomp. It’s going to be a putrefied mess. But that will probably save us maceration time.”

Guilt and some of the stress lifted from Leigh’s shoulders as she watched Matt and his students efficiently move around the lab, getting ready to start a new case.

Together they’d stopped a killer who’d flown below the radar for years, until she’d joined forces with Matt and his team. After the case ended, she thought their work together was done. But it looked like she was wrong.

The team was back.

NO ONE SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL is available today on Amazon for the Kindle. But you don’t need a Kindle to read it—the free Kindle app for PC, Mac, Android, and iOS products is available here. And if you enjoy the novella, we’d love it if you reviewed it on Goodreads and Amazon. Happy reading!

High Concept Writing

I’m back from a crazy week of travelling for my jobs as both an author and a scientist. A week ago, I attended New England Crime Bake in Boston, combining the conference with an opportunity to do some final research for TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER. One of the panels I attended was on high concept writing, and I wanted to share some of that content here.

One of the most interesting parts of the panel—which consisted of five authors (Robin Cook, Hallie Ephron, Chris Knopf, Daniel Palmer, and Len Rosen, moderated by Ray Daniel)—was that they had a hard time even describing the idea of ‘high concept’. It’s one of those things that everyone wants, but has a hard time putting into words without using an example as the entire description.

In basic terms, high concept should encapsulate your story in a single sentence, in a way that makes your reader say Ohhhhh… Essentially, you’re explaining the hook of your book without actually talking about it, in a length that could be easily contained on a cocktail napkin.

So what exactly do they mean by this? Robin Cook, the author of Outbreak, Critical, and Contagion, summed up his breakthrough novel Coma like this: Bad doctors in bad hospitals. He then explained that at the time (1977), most doctors were represented by the likes of Marcus Welby, so this was the antithesis of the current mindset surrounding medical professionals.

So what are some examples of high concept, that thing that no one knows what it means, yet everyone wants? Michael Crichton is considered the king of high concept, so let’s look at several of his works to get the idea:

Jurassic Park— Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park, and the entire world can visit them for a price… until something goes wrong.

The Andromeda Strain—A deadly extraterrestrial microorganism threatens to annihilate human life.

Sphere—A group of scientists investigate a spaceship discovered on the ocean floor.

The ultimate form of high concept writing encapsulates the idea in only a few words in the title—Snakes on a Plane—or in even a single word—Sharknado. Without hearing details about the story, the title encapsulates the hook. Granted, even having a catchy high concept title isn’t a guarantee of success—Snakes on a Plane never earned out at the box office.

Bottom line—is a high concept something that every book needs? Absolutely not, especially if you are writing literary fiction. But if you are writing fiction with that pop you love in some of your favourite thrillers or action/adventure movies, you may want to work on this kind of hook. Then before you know it, your novel may be the next high concept idea showing on your local IMAX screen.

Photo credit: Universal Studios

See you next week!

I had the best of intentions to have a blog post for you all today. But a day after flying back from Boston's New England Crime Bake and while packing for Washington D.C. for the day job, I simply didn't have time to pull one together. Today I'm flying to D.C. for the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene conference where I'll be participating in a big international meeting for our dengue fever project.

Next week, I'll be back with the first post based on content learned at New England Crime Bake. See you then!

Photo credit: lreed76

Forensic Case Files: Roman Warriors in London

The London Cross Rail Project has previously brought historical remains to light, including the Black Death Plague victims we covered last spring. Recently, the oldest remains to date were unearthed nearly three metres below the surface—those of Roman warriors found in a drained riverbed under the Liverpool Street railway and underground station. The twenty skulls are believed to have been washed down the Walbrook River from a previously discovered Roman burial ground upstream.

The Walbrook—one of London’s 'lost rivers' that now runs completely underground— used to divide the city of London into the east and west sides, starting in the modern day district of Finsbury and running south before draining into the Thames River. A crucial water system during Roman Londinium times, the Walbrook was not only a transportation system; it also delivered fresh water to the city and carried away waste to the Thames. However, it was paved over in the fifteenth century to allow for better transportation through a growing metropolitan city with an ever increasing population.

Archeologists surmise that the Walbrook may have eroded the land around the old Roman cemetery under Eldon Street, washing the skulls downstream. The skulls were discovered at a bend in the old river, where they became lodged. Trapped in the soft mud of the riverbank, the skulls remained remarkably well-preserved. A number of Roman-era pottery shards in equally good condition were recovered with the skulls. The fact that only the skulls of the dead have been discovered could be due to several factors: Due to their shape, skulls tend to travel further in rivers as they can be rolled along by the downstream water flow. But these may have been decapitation victims, the act of severing the skulls from the body allowing for easier transportation to a new location.

Additional dating is yet to be completed, but archeologist estimate that the skulls are from the third and fourth century A.D. since this is when Roman burials were common, as opposed to cremation, which was the common practice before the second century A.D. Forensic anthropologists will study the remains to determine age and sex.

As the project continues, it is expected that additional Roman-era remains will be found, expanding on the current understanding of Roman life in early London.

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 I’m off to Boston on Thursday for research for several books and to attend the New England Crime Bake, so I’ll be back with a report on that conference next week.

Photo credit: BBC News

Cover Shoot and Reveal for NO ONE SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL

The second instalment in the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries releases November 26th as an e-book. We wrote this novella to bridge the gap in publishing between DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT and A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH. Matt and Leigh’s second case together occurs very soon after their first in the timeline. As an added bonus, the first several chapters of A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH will follow the novella itself as a taste of what’s next in the series.

Since Ann and I are self-pubbing this series entry, we also decided to tackle doing the cover ourselves. No easy task when we’re fitting into the framework of excellent existing series covers:

Luckily, my eldest daughter is currently in the second year of her Bachelor of Applied Arts in Photography program and she offered her skills and artistic eye—as well as the school’s professional studio—to produce the cover.

We did the cover shoot last week. My youngest daughter was kind enough to be our model, so it was a real family affair. Here are a few behind the scenes shots from the cover shoot in progress.

Model positioning and lighting set up:

The moment that turned into the final shot:

After the shoot came post production. I knew the shot I wanted as soon as I saw it, but we needed to play around with the possibilities of full colour versus black and white:

While we wanted to convey the starkness of the victim’s plight, we decided that black and white was too monochromatic. In the end, we decided that a desaturated version of the full colour photo best conveyed our theme.

Then came cropping, image correction, and adding authors’ names and the Abbott and Lowell series banner. We decided on a title font that had a touch of Sanskrit flow to it, and we were done.

We’re proud to present our final result:

Only the joint forces of science and law enforcement can help when a young woman is found brutally murdered with her identity erased.

Massachusetts State Police Trooper Leigh Abbott and forensic anthropologist Matt Lowell come together to solve their second case when the remains of a young woman are found, thrown away like garbage at a local landfill. But what seems straightforward becomes something much more sinister when the victim’s bone damage reveals a shocking history of abuse. It will take reliving the horrors of Matt’s military background, all the team’s forensic skills, and Leigh’s intuition combined for them to catch the killer and give the victim the justice she deserves.

So what do you think of our new cover?

We’re in the finishing stages of putting together a mini street team for this release. So if you read and loved DEAD, would like to get early, free access to our material and would be willing to write reviews on the book for Amazon and Goodreads to help create buzz, please let me know and I’d be happy to add you to our list!

Photo credit: Jessica Newton Photography

Gone Fishing...

This glorious picture by the über talented hpaich pretty much sums up the life of leisure I'd like to be experiencing this week. But, in reality, Ann and I are in the final week of finishing up Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries #4 - TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER - so we're taking a week off from blogging to slave away on our manuscript.

But stay tuned on Wednesday of next week for a very special guest post as writing bud and fellow Seymour Agency author Marianne Harden launches her debut humorous mystery - MALICIOUS MISCHIEF.

Photo credit: hpaich

Crafting the Perfect Villain

Snidely Whiplash

I’m back this week with more craft tips from Bouchercon 2013. This week, I'm covering the panel on crafting the perfect villain with authors Barbara Fister, Michael Dymmoch, Steve Hamilton, Joe Lansdale, Jon McFetridge, and Helen Smith. Michael Dymmock started off by reminding the audience that the villain is the hero of his own story, always a good point for any writer to keep in mind when you’re trying to create a real and believable character. Of course, in some cases, the villain or antagonist isn’t even a person—instead it could be the forces of nature or a deadly pathogen—but for the sake of simplicity in this blog post, I'm only talking about a human antagonist.

How can we craft effective villains that don’t cross the line into unbelievable caricature? The panel offered some tips and aspects to consider:

• Some villains are simply pure evil, but another angle on a good villain is to create one that readers actually like and then are sorry to see caught.

• It’s important to understand the other side. We need to understand evil to be able to write it convincingly. Most of us can—just because we understand what might drive a person to horrific acts, doesn’t mean we’d ever actually act on those impulses ourselves. But being able to empathize to a certain extent allows us to write a compelling character. Try writing from the villain’s perspective to help create that empathy and make your villain multidimensional.

• Bad guys don’t always know they’re bad. It’s all a matter of point-of-view: what seems evil to one person, might seem like a minor offence or a totally justifiable action to another. Sometimes it’s about the spectrum of shades of gray. Real villains are also well-rounded. You may have a villain who is hell bent on destroying your hero, but who supports local charities. Full bodied characters are multidimensional.

• Good can be a sliding scale and sometimes the good guy is only slightly less bad than the bad guy. Multidimensional characters and complex storytelling is interesting, and only rarely can you convincingly write a single-mindedly bad guy like Snidley Whiplash opposing a purely good guy like Dudley Do-Right. Heroes like Dexter are questionably ‘heroic’ and are often only a few notches above the antagonist on that sliding scale.

• Craft your villain to suit the scope of your story. A big city villain may have a larger than life personality, but you may want to create a more subtle character in an intimate small town (unless, of course, you want your villain to stand out like a sore thumb right from the very first page).

• Make it all about internal emotions, not external characteristics. In other words, an eye patch doesn’t make a villain. It’s how that character feels about the eye patch and why he has to wear it that might push him over the edge to villainy.

• If you’re having trouble creating a believable villain, pick someone you know and exaggerate their characteristics. This grounds the character firmly in reality but pushes them towards extreme behavior.

Thanks to the authors on this panel for a fascinating discussion and some very solid advice!

Pacing as a Writing Tool

My recent trip to Bouchercon in Albany was enjoyable not only from the aspect of an author meeting her readers, but also as a writer who is always looking to improve her craft. Just because you’re a published author doesn’t mean that there is nothing left to learn. So I made it a point to attend several panels on writing craft.

One of the panels I attended was on pacing. Authors Toni Kelner, A. X. Ahmad, Daniel Friedman, Michael Kardos, Dale T. Phillips, and Julie Pomeroy discussed the finer points of pacing stories, specifically in crime fiction. It was an excellent panel, so I wanted to cover some of their ideas here.

Unlike literary fiction, crime fiction authors needs to get into their story immediately and escalate quickly from there. The panel authors shared many of their tips and tricks to crafting a well-paced and exciting storyline:

• The sliding scale of pacing depends on specific subgenres. Cozy mysteries are expected to have a slower pace than thrillers, and police procedurals tend to have a slow, stately buildup as the case progresses. Write according to the basic rules of your subgenre.

• Even when the pace of the story is rapid, both the story and the readers need time to breathe. A story that goes at breakneck pace for the entire novel may actually leave readers feeling exhausted rather than breathless with anticipation. Good stories give the protagonist moments to reflect on what is happening to him, rather than doing nothing more than constantly reacting.

• Pacing can be the by-product of a good plot. An exhilarating and intriguing story will naturally keep the pace moving without needing superfluous Michael Bay-like explosions to artificially ramp up the tension.

• If you’re going to blow up something, don’t do it on page one before the reader has a chance to connect with your characters because they simply won’t care. Once they know and love your characters, putting them in jeopardy as a natural part of the plot will pick up the pace and keep the reader turning the page.

• A pacing tip: Start your story in motion. Have your character on the move, hurrying from place to place, or in the car. This gives a sense of urgency right from the opening line.

• Add a clock. Nothing ramps up the tension like a life or death deadline or a ticking clock à la 24.

• Alternate scenes to pick up the pace. This is a film trick directors often employ. Change up POV and scene locations in short cuts to increase urgency.

• Use high stakes to propel your story and give it energy.

• Pacing doesn’t always equal action. Use dialogue instead as it can be loaded with emotional stakes for your characters

• Short chapters can give the impression of speeding up your storytelling and will keep the reader flipping right to the next chapter.

• As the recently deceased Elmore Leonard is famous for saying—leave out the parts people skip.

Hopefully, you’ll find these tips as helpful as I did. In the next writing post, I’m going to cover the excellent panel on creating the perfect villain.

Photo credit: -cavin­-

Bouchercon 2013 Debrief

I’m just back from Albany, NY following the close of Bouchercon 2013. It was a great experience and I met some wonderful new readers, booksellers, and fellow authors.

Bouchercon is always a huge conference and this year was no exception. Attendance this year was approximately 1500, so our venue at the Empire State Plaza worked well for meeting rooms, theater seating for evening events, and signing tables, while still having plenty of room for all the booksellers and their loaded tables of books. This year’s noted guests included Sue Grafton, Tess Gerritsen, Louise Penny and Anne Perry.

So what were some of my highlights?

• The general atmosphere: It’s always fun to be immersed in the writing/publishing milieu. These are people who don’t stare at you oddly when you mention your own characters talking to you, or who nod in understanding when you talk about some of the crazy things you’ve done in the name of research. These are people who “get you” and think in exactly the same terms, be they writers or readers.

• Meeting readers: One of the great thrills of Bouchercon for me was meeting new readers. Not people I know who read the book because they know me, but readers who found the book in a store, or who discovered it in a library and then loved it so much they went out and bought their own copy (Kathy, I’m looking at you!). It’s very gratifying to develop a personal connection with people who love what you do.

• Meeting good friends for the first time in person: I’ve made some very good friends through my agency—other writers who either also signed with Nicole or have come into the agency family. It was a true pleasure to be able to spend five days hanging out with the hilarious Marianne Harden, another of Nic’s early clients, as she attended Bouchercon promoting her humorous mystery Malicious Mischief (which debuts Oct. 22^nd). There’s always time for a glass of wine in the evening with Marianne!

• Hearing words of wisdom from the professionals: Evening events included hour-long interviews with Sue Grafton, Tess Gerritsen and Anne Perry. It was fascinating to hear how their careers have developed and an outline of their future plans. All three ladies were very gracious, well-spoken and humorous.

• Favourite panel: I’ve been a Louise Penny fan for a long time (no, not just because she’s also Canadian!). The Beautiful Mystery is a personal favourite of mine, partly because of the musical aspect of the book. Louise did a panel with long-time friends and authors Rhys Bowen and Deborah Crombie. Instead of the typical panel with authors behind a table, these three friends brought their chairs out front and invited us into their impromptu ‘living room’. They were funny and gracious, and this definitely stands as my favourite panel of the con.

• Being on my first panel: I sat on the forensics panel on opening day. The lovely Elizabeth Haynes moderated myself, Elly Griffiths, Kendra Elliot and Sarah Shaber. It was a standing room only crowd, and we had a lively and interesting discussion with lots of very positive feedback afterward. It was a personal pleasure to share that hour with four very talented authors and genuinely lovely women.

It was a great experience to attend my first Bouchercon, and I look forward to many more. Look out Long Beach, CA in 2014. Here I come!

Meet the Bouchercon Forensics Panel!

Tomorrow I’m heading off on the long drive to Albany, NY (thanks to hubby for lending me his beloved Mustang for the trip) to Bouchercon, the premier North American mystery conference for both readers and writers. I’m honoured to be sitting on the forensics panel—We Didn’t Start the Fire (But We Can Tell You How It Started)—with four wonderful authors, and I thought I’d use this week’s blog entry to highlight my co-panelists and some of their body of work.

Elizabeth Haynes: Elizabeth, our panel moderator, lives in Kent in the U.K. and works as a police intelligence analyst. A writer from her earliest days, Elizabeth produced her first real novel for NaNoWriMo in 2005 and then tried again in 2006 and 2007. Her debut thriller Into the Darkest Corner (a real nail biter, let me tell you…) was written as part of 2008’s NaNoWriMo and was published in 2011. Since then, Elizabeth has released Dark Tide and Human Remains, with Under a Silent Moon scheduled for release in 2014.

Elly Griffiths: Born in London and currently living in Brighton, Elly writes the Ruth Galloway series about a forensic archaeologist who assists the police whenever local human remains are discovered. Drawing from her husband’s profession as an archaeologist, as well as her aunt’s knowledge and experience from living on the Norfolk coast, the Galloway series is full of real archeological details mixed with the mythology and history of the area. The series starts with The Crossing Places and includes The Janus Stone, The House at Sea’s End, A Room Full of Bones, and A Dying Fall. The sixth book in the series, The Outcast Dead, is scheduled for release in 2014.

Kendra Elliot: When Kendra first started out, she wrote contemporary romance. But when her characters ‘kept tripping over dead bodies’, she turned her hand to writing romantic suspense and hasn’t looked back. Kendra has released three novels (Hidden, Chilled, and Buried) and her fourth, Alone, will be released in January of 2014. A dental hygienist with a love of forensics, she turned her own knowledge and talents into her protagonist Lacey Campbell, a forensic odontologist in Hidden. Kendra is also a regular contributor to the wonderful Murder She Writes blog.

Sarah Shaber: Sarah won the Malice Domestic/St. Martin's Press Best First Traditional Mystery Award for the first novel in her Simon Shaw series, Simon Says. The series follows the adventures of Simon, a professor and forensic historian, through a series of historical murders in Snipe Hunt, The Fugitive King, The Bug Funeral, and Shell Game. Her newest historical suspense series stars Louise Pearlie as a young widow, working during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the CIA) in Washington D.C. Louise’s story starts in Louise’s War and continues in Louise’s Gamble. The third book in the series, Louise’s Dilemma, will release in November 2013.

And then there’s me—I’ll be holding down the forensic anthropology and biological sciences end of the discussion.

I’m very much looking forward to meeting these talented ladies in person and sharing some discussion around forensics and writing within the genre of crime fiction. For any readers attending, we’ll be in room 2 at 2:40pm on Thursday and would love to see you there!

Photo credit: Jason Paris

Publishing News and a Cover Reveal!

It’s been a fun week for publishing news for Ann and me. First of all, we’re very happy to announce that DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT is now available in Kindle format. There have been a lot of readers who were waiting for this, so we’re pleased that the novel is available for a cheap and cheerful $3.19, perfect for giving a new series a spin if you haven’t tried us out yet. The Kindle version is available here: Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries #1: DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT.

The e-novella that follows the first series installment will release this fall. As several of you have asked for more information about it, I wanted to include its blurb here:

Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries #2: NO ONE SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL (November 2013)

Only the joint forces of science and law enforcement can help when a young woman is found brutally murdered with her identity erased.

Massachusetts State Police Trooper Leigh Abbott and forensic anthropologist Matt Lowell come together to solve their second case when the remains of a young woman are found, thrown away like garbage at a local landfill. But what seems straightforward becomes something much more sinister when the victim’s bone damage reveals a shocking history of abuse. It will take reliving the horrors of Matt’s military background, all the team’s forensic skills, and Leigh’s intuition combined for them to catch the killer and give the victim the justice she deserves.

And now we move to our other big news of the day. This past week we got our first peek at the cover for A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH. Thanks to the Five Star team and the designers at ENC for once again creating a cover that encapsulates the story’s basic themes:

Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries #3: A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH (May 2014)

At Halloween, Salem, Massachusetts, is a hot spot for Witch and tourist alike. But when a murder spree begins, a cop and scientist must team up to find the killer before a media circus unleashes, panic ensues, and more victims are killed.

Forensic anthropologist Matt Lowell and Massachusetts State Police Trooper Leigh Abbott are called in to investigate burned remains following a fire in a historic antique shop. As Matt, Leigh and their team of graduate students investigate the death, clues point to Salem's traditional Witchcraft community. However, having dabbled in the Craft as a teenager, Leigh is skeptical that someone who has sworn an oath of good to all and harm to none would commit premeditated murder, let alone kill in such a vicious way.

A second body is found in a similar fire and the team begins to suspect that coven members are being framed. Now they must solve the murders before 100,000 tourists overrun Salem for what could be the deadliest Halloween of their lives.

Next week I’ll be preparing to attend Bouchercon, so I’ll be highlighting the forensics panel I’ll be on and the authors who will be participating with me. See you then!

The Trials of a Debut Author

Ann and I have been watching the hullaballoo surrounding J.K. Rowling’s surprise mystery debut The Cuckoo’s Calling with great interest. Debut authors ourselves at the very same time as ‘Mr. Galbraith’s’ release, we know very well how hard it is for a new author to make a name for themselves. Mr. Galbraith’s journey from a small print run and near obscurity to Ms. Rowling’s stardom and selling power is a stunning example of how publishing is often not about the product, but the name behind it.

This is not a slight against The Cuckoo’s Calling. The book received very favourable early reviews, and yet this book and its unknown author still couldn’t find traction in the market. It sold to only very modest numbers in the U.K. and North America in the first three months following its release.

Of course, all that changed the moment Robert Galbraith’s real identity was leaked, revealing that the author was actually Ms. Rowling. Suddenly a 300,000 copy print run was ordered for a book that sold less than 10,000 copies in all formats combined before the secret broke. Had the book itself changed? Not at all, simply the name behind it. But that made all the difference in the world.

Series tend to gather steam as they grow. When Nora Roberts, writing as J.D. Robb, published the very first ‘In Death’ book, it wasn’t a huge event. She was an unknown author writing a combination of science fiction, police procedural, and romantic suspense. But as additional series instalments were published, more and more fans came on board. I discovered the series (currently standing at 36 books) when there were only several books out and have been an avid reader ever since. But it wasn’t until the release of the twelfth book that it was revealed that J.D. Robb was actually blockbuster author Nora Roberts. Her pseudonym was created because Roberts’ prolific writing made it difficult for Putnam to keep up with her content production, meshed with Roberts’ own desire to take her writing in a different direction. Thus, J.D. Robb was born.

One can’t blame Ms. Rowling for trying to make a fresh start. When she first began the Harry Potter series, she was a complete unknown. In fact, it wasn’t until the fourth book in the series—Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire—was released that the phenomenon of Harry Potter really caught on worldwide. From that point on, the expectations and the hysteria around each new release grew exponentially. When the Potter series finally ended, the expectations around Ms. Rowling’s next book were impossible to satisfy, and, inevitably, The Casual Vacancy was met with mixed reviews. I can certainly understand why Ms. Rowling wanted to start from scratch, being able to write simply for the joy of it once again and not under the pressure of unrealistic expectations. Her intention was to publish at least several books in the series, building a fan base for Mr. Galbraith before she went public with the truth about her pseudonym. For the brief span of a few months, she achieved that goal. But the cat is out of the bag for good now, at least as far as Robert Galbraith is concerned.

The reality of the publishing world is that if you don’t write in one of the current ‘hot’ genres or categories, it can be very hard to make a splash, excellent product or not. As an unknown, it can be hard to get authors to blurb your book, and unless you are with a large house, the majority of your publicity is left to you—Mr. Galbraith was not with a small house, and still it appears he only had limited support. This series of events also shines a light on how even an excellent book struggles to find an audience in amongst the multitude of releases around it. It’s simply the truth of the business.

Ann and I are practical about building a career. We’re in it for the long haul, not for the flash-in-the-pan, so we’re satisfied to build our series with regular releases as we build our fan base. It’s certainly a realistic lesson for all debut authors about the challenges ahead of them, but forewarned is forearmed, and good things come to those who wait.

Report From The Writing Trenches

It’s been an insanely busy couple of months. Starting with the release of DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT in June, I feel like I’ve been going non-stop, and there’s no end in sight. So I thought I’d take a brief break from the normal round of forensic posts to talk about what’s been going on with me lately.

1. Our novella, NO ONE SEES ME ‘TIL I FALL, has gone through our critique team and has been professionally edited. For now, it’s been temporarily put aside for one last pass before formatting to get it ready for a November release. Cover art is still to come. This novella is the second installment in the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries and occurs in series time two weeks after DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT and about a week before A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH.
2. Copy edits for A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH are complete. This is the third installment in the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries and is scheduled for hardcover release in May 2014 with the eBook to follow. I’m expecting the cover art to arrive any time now since Advanced Reading Copies are due in only a few months. As soon as we’ve got the go ahead to release the new cover art, you’ll see it here first.
3. I’m getting ready to attend Bouchercon 2013 in Albany, NY in less than a month. I recently found out that I’ll be sitting on the forensics panel with five excellent authors. More to come on that in the next few weeks.
4. My biggest challenge lately has been our newest novel, the fourth installment in the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries. TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER is definitely the most intense draft I’ve ever produced. DEAD was written over about five months, when I was in my former lab job (which was much less intense than my current position) and when I wasn’t into the social media aspects etc. of being a debut author. FLAME was written in about 8 or 10 weeks last year while I was between jobs and had the whole day get my words in. This novel is being written in about the same length of time as FLAME but with a very intense 40-hours-a-week in my new job. Don’t get me wrong, I love working with my current group, but it makes for an 18-hour work day nearly every day of the week.
5. I’ll be attending New England Crime Bake in early November, and have padded a day on each side of the trip to Boston to make sure all my locations for TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER are perfect, as well as to start scouting locations for the next full length Abbott and Lowell novel. We’ve got great plans for that one, and the perfect location for a large part of the novel is going to be crucial. Even though we won’t be starting planning on that novel until January, I want to be boots-on-the-ground with my camera in November to get all the shots we need ahead of time.

So that’s my crazy life for the last half of 2013. Our WIP manuscript is currently almost 70% done, and the goal is to have the first draft complete in September, critiqued in October, re-edited and sent to our editor in November. Wish me luck getting the first draft in on time; I’m going to need it!

Photo credit: Shane Pope

Forensic Case Files: 16th Century Vampire Burials

Modern sensibilities and science tell us that there is no such thing as vampires (especially not sparkly ones!). But to people of the Middle and early Modern Ages, vampires were a real fear. The belief in vampires likely evolved because people of the time didn’t understand the natural process of decomposition, including corpse bloating and fluid purging. To protect themselves from the undead, communities adopted specific burial practices:

• Four skeletons were recovered this past July in Poland during a road construction project. Each set of remains was found with the head buried between the legs. Since the bodies were buried without personal effects, dating of the remains is proving difficult, but, with further testing, scientists hope to confirm their estimate of a fifteenth or sixteenth century burial. During that period, suspected vampires would be ritually executed by decapitation, or they would be hung until decomposition naturally rotted the neck tissues and the weight of the body pulled it from the head. The belief was that a vampire would not be able to rise if it couldn’t locate its own head.

• In Bulgaria, a number of skeletons have been discovered with an iron rod through the heart and their teeth removed. This ritual provided two-fold protection: The iron rod pinned the dead into the grave, preventing them from rising. But in case they did manage to escape, removal of the teeth ensured that the undead would not be able to feast on flesh of the living.

• The Black Plague killed over 50,000 residents of Venice in the year 1576, including the medieval artist Titian. Four hundred and thirty-three years later, Italian researcher Matteo Borrini and his team were excavating a mass grave from the epidemic when they discovered a peculiar victim—a dead woman with a brick wedged between her teeth. Dr. Borrini hypothesized that the practice of opening up mass graves to add more victims, thereby exposing the decomposing bodies, led people to believe that vampires were spreading the plague by chewing on their death shrouds. Bricks were placed in the mouths of these ‘Shroud Eaters’ to stop them from spreading disease.

What appears as odd customs to modern people were reinforced to those early believers as the ‘vampires’ never rose from the grave. And looking at it from a modern perspective, it’s clear where some of the customs around current vampire traditions arose. So the next time you see a vampire movie, remember that some of those mythical aspects date back centuries to a time when society was looking for simple answers to explain complex biology.

Photo credit: Andrzej Grygiel/EPA, Nikolay Doychinov/ AFP and Matteo Borrini

Forensics 101: Mass Grave Methodology

The first hurdle to overcome in mass grave investigations is determining the location of the grave. As we discussed last week, mass graves are deliberately hidden to avoid detection, so simply finding the grave is the crucial first step. To further complicate the process, there are often one or more satellite sites associated with mass graves:

• the execution site (either a surface execution site or a site within the grave itself)

• temporary surface deposition sites used during the transfer of remains from primary to secondary and tertiary sites.

But once the final grave is discovered, how do investigators proceed with an excavation that has to unearth and account for all the evidence in the grave without losing any important information?

There are two main methods used to excavate a mass grave:

Pedestal method:

• The soil around the body mass is removed to just below the lower boundary of the grave, allowing complete viewing from all angles and access to all bodies along the outer margins and top of the grave.

• The original grave walls and ramp are destroyed, but investigators do not have to stand on bodies during the excavation process since workers start at the outer boundaries and work inward.

• This formation allows for water drainage from the site and more complete in situ photography while bodies are still in place.

• The main disadvantage to this method is the loss of stability conferred by the earth surrounding the grave. If the central mass erodes, bodies and body parts can become displaced.

Stratigraphic method:

• The grave is treated as a single site: bodies and artifacts are excavated from top to bottom, removing evidence in reverse order to which it was deposited into the grave.

• Grave walls and ramps are retained, leading to a better understanding of how the grave was constructed. Tool marks and tire tracks may also be recovered.

• Due to the even lowering of the surface grave, rainwater can pool within the confines of the grave, damaging exposed remains or eroding the body mass, but tents or shelters can be constructed over the grave to protect it during inclement weather.

• Only bodies on the top of the mass can be accessed or viewed.

• The bodies must be walked on by the investigators during the course of the excavation.

So which method is better?

• Bones are separated from the body during both methods, although larger bones tends to be dissociated in the pedestal method and smaller bones in the stratigraphic method. Thus the stratigraphic method results in more complete body recoveries.

• Decomposition tends to progress faster in bodies on the outer edges of the grave. The pedestal method exposes those bodies, leading to erosion of the mass and possible mixing of the remains.

• Secondary or tertiary graves tend to contain more skeletonized remains and increased dissociation. Use of the pedestal method seems to accelerate slumping of the grave mass.

As a result, current scientific opinion is that the stratigraphic method is preferable where possible.

Photo credit: Gilles Peress and Press Association

I’m going to take a break from blogging for the next few weeks to enjoy the summer holidays and visiting family, but we’ll be back on August 20th with all new content. See you then!

Forensics 101: Forensic Challenges of Mass Grave Excavations

Last week we marked the 18^th anniversary of the massacre of 8,100 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica by the Bosnian Serbs. The overwhelming majority of these victims were buried in mass graves in the remote countryside. The task for investigators following the massacre was not only finding the gravesites, but successfully excavating and identifying the victims.

The UN defines a mass grave as a location containing three or more victims who have died by extra-judicial or arbitrary executions that are not the result of an armed conflict (an extra-judicial action is one that takes place by a state or other official authority without legal process or the permission of a court).

Investigators need to determine not only time since death, but also discover any evidence of torture, the specific method of death, and the identity of the victim where possible. For many bodies, this may be a near impossible task.

Among the numerous challenges confronting researchers during mass grave excavations in Bosnia were:

• State of the remains: Victims were often not buried immediately after death because of the need to bring in heavy equipment to dig the grave. As a result, partially decomposed remains became separated and scattered within a single gravesite. The heavy machinery used to dig mass graves and to transport and bury the dead also caused damage to both the soft tissue and the skeleton, masking original trauma and complicating the investigation.

• Victim collection and labeling: During any forensic recovery, each separate body part is identified as an individual specimen. Any possible personal effects or related body parts must be labeled with related information for later association, leading to an incredibly complex identification scheme.

• Secondary and tertiary graves: A large majority of the mass graves in Bosnia were reopened, and disinterred victims moved to secondary or even tertiary graves. Since this occurred anywhere from one and four months post-mortem, soft tissue degradation was well advanced, leading to significant scattering of victims’ remains across large swathes of countryside.

• Lack of associated physical objects: Bodies were carelessly dumped into mass graves and often tightly packed to keep the site as small as possible. When personal effects were recovered, it was often impossible to determine to whom they belonged.

• Clandestine sites: Mass graves, by design, were purposely situated in difficult-to-identify locations, usually in remote areas. In addition, the killers deliberately tried to make victim ID difficult by having their victims remove all personal effects, such as wallets and jewelry, before execution.

• Sheer number of victims: Some mass graves in Bosnia contained up to 700 victims. This made victim recovery and identification a substantial task simply from a procedural and practical standpoint.

• Need for large international teams: Human rights horrors such as mass graves are very difficult tasks for investigators, frequently leading to depression and fatigue. Regular replacements are required, and the specialized nature of the work involved requires an international effort to staff a large team. It will normally take 1 or 2 investigators approximately 4 days to excavate a single victim. If a grave has hundreds of victims, it can take a team of several dozen investigators months to complete.

• Need for on-site facilities: Due to the remote nature of most mass graves, investigators must build or acquire forensic facilities for their investigation—including refrigerated storage areas, running water, decontamination areas, and sorting areas for both remains and personal effects. Provision must also be made for site security during the excavation, and accommodations for the technical staff.

• Victim identification: The majority of mass grave victims frequently lacked sufficient dental records to allow for dental identification. As a result, pathologists and forensic anthropologists had to rely on physical features and antemortem fractures to establish victim identification.

Next week we’re going to look at the practical side of mass grave excavations—how to find the graves—and then, once they are located, how to recover the victims.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons and Gilles Peress.

Forensic Case Files: The Srebrenica Massacre

July 11^th this past week marked the 18^th anniversary of the beginning of the Srebrenica massacre—the day the Bosnian Serb army, under the command of General Ratko Mladić, took control of the UN protected enclave of Srebrenica in Bosnia.  Two days later the genocide began.  Between July 13^th and 22^nd, 1995, over 8,100 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred and buried in mass graves by the Serb Army. Between August and November of 1995, many of those bodies were moved to secondary and tertiary mass graves, scattering remains across 300+ grave sites. The locations of these graves were largely unknown to outside investigators, and while a large number of them have been discovered, many are still unidentified.  Teams of pathologists and forensic anthropologists are sponsored by the International Commission on Missing Persons to excavate each newly discovered grave. Attempts are made to identify remains by PCR, physical characteristics and personal belongings found within the grave.  It is truly horrifying work for the ICMP team members, but it is also rewarding as missing loved ones are finally identified and put to rest.

DNA analysis comparing family member samples to the unidentified remains has resulted in the identification of 6,838 individuals from the more than 8,100 reported missing following those 10 days in July. But there remains no trace of over 1,200 men and boys to this day.

On July 11th of each year, all of the newly identified dead are brought to the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial in Potočari for burial.  Last Thursday, 409 additional sets of remains—often no more than a handful of bones—were laid to rest at the memorial. Included in the dead were 43 boys between the ages of 14 and 18, and a newborn infant who was born during the massacre.  This brings the total number of remains interred here to 6,066.

Next week, as we explore this difficult topic further, we’ll look at the forensic anthropology challenges of mass graves.

Photo credit: green-draped coffins—Almir Dzanovic, mass grave exhumation— Photograph provided courtesy of the ICTY, Potocari gravestones— Michael Büker, Potocari Memorial—Mazbln and Potocari Memorial names— Michael Büker; all Wikimedia Commons

Writing WHO You Know

One of the most common pieces of writing advice out there is ‘write what you know’. I’m going to go off on a tangent from that concept to discuss writing who you know.

In reviews of DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT, there are always comments about the main characters, Trooper Leigh Abbott and Dr. Matt Lowell, and the chemistry they share. But the second most frequent comment is about the book’s secondary characters.

From Amazon.com:

The book is true to the teacher/student relationship. I love the way Matt taught his students, trusting them and respecting them but also protecting them where he needed to. As a teacher, I can say it felt...right, to me. I liked that none of the relationships fell back on stereotypes.

From Goodreads.com:

There is a dynamic cast of secondary characters that add depth and humor to the storyline.

One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about J.D. Robb’s ‘In Death’ series is the large cast of secondary characters that surround the leads and how those characters were given time to grow and develop, and sometimes earn substantial storylines of their own. I always wanted to have that kind of feel within the Abbot and Lowell Forensic Mysteries series.

As a bench scientist for more than 20 years, I’ve had students come and go from our lab. Some passed through quietly, but a number of them made strong impressions on me. When it came to developing characters to back up forensic anthropologist Dr. Matt Lowell, I took advantage of being able to write the characters I knew.

Take Matt’s senior graduate student – Akiko Niigata, or Kiko as she is usually called. Without a doubt, Kiko is the fictional version of one of my best grad students, Vera. Like Vera, she is strong, has a wicked sense of humour, doesn’t suffer fools gladly, is skilled in martial arts, and is a fantastic artist. We always used to tell Vera that she needed to find a way to combine her dual skills in science and the arts, perhaps by illustrating textbooks or journal articles. In Kiko, we have an osteologist and forensic anthropologist-in-training who uses her artistic skills to offer accurate crime scenes sketches for the team, and to provide 2D and 3D skull reconstructions of victims. The name I gave this character is also an inside joke, and my labmates from that time will remember exactly who the infamous Akiko is.

Some grad students in the fictional series are a compilation of past real-life students. Another successful Ph.D. student, Dusan, provides character Paul Layne with his sense of humour and ability to ‘stir the pot’ (especially with the girls in the lab).

The relationship that Matt has with his grad students is really the relationship that I enjoyed with mine. Adults in their own right, these were skilled young men and women who had give-and-take relationships with their trainers, and that aspect is reflected in these characters. The grad students in the series bring their own individual skills to the group, and it’s the combined talents of the two leads and the three students that truly make the team successful in their investigations.

Writing who you know has the advantages of grounding characters in your head and giving you a spring board. While you won’t write your characters exactly as you know real people in your life, you can take aspects of their personalities that strike you as quirky, stubborn or resiliant, and build those into your fictional characters. This isn’t cheating; it’s using the world around you to your advantage. If you’re having trouble finding dynamic characters to write about, instead of falling back on familiar tropes, trying drawing from your own life experiences. You may be pleasantly surprised by how real your characters will seem, and how they will jump off the page for both you and your readers.

Forensic Case Files: American Colonies’ First Murder Victim, Circa 1624

The skeleton was found in 1996 by the Jamestown Rediscovery Archaeological Project team on Jamestown Island, Virginia. Unlike the majority of the settlers’ graves located in the cemetery within the James Fort, the man was discovered under an old roadbed near one other grave close to the southern palisade and the site of the barracks. Soil staining and the remnants of rusted iron nails indicate that he was buried in six-sided, flat-lidded wood coffin. His naked body was originally wrapped in a shroud that is long gone—its presence now only marked by green stains left on the skull and right shin from two brass straight pins used to secure it.

Forensic anthropologists could tell much about the man from his remains. He was tall for the time at nearly 5’9”. He had a slight build, but significant muscle attachment points on the skeleton indicated a strong upper body. He was between the ages of 18 – 20 and showed no sign of disease. His cause of death was equally clear: His right leg was broken and twisted just below the knee, with no signs of healing or bone remodeling. A lead ball and shards of lead shot were embedded in and around the bone.

Forensic anthropologist Dr. Doug Owsley (who has been involved with cases such as the lost Union Solider at Antietam, the murder of a Jamestown colonial servant, and evidence of cannibalism at James Fort) determined that the lead ball hit the leg with such force that it shattered the bone and tore all the soft tissue, twisting the leg 180^o. The wound was fatal, likely rupturing the popliteal artery, and the victim bled out within minutes.

The skull was badly crushed from centuries of pressure from above, but was painstakingly reconstructed by forensic anthropologist Dr. David Hunt, allowing forensic artist Sharon Long to create a 3D reconstruction of the victim:

 

Up to now, the man’s identity has been a mystery. But recent research has revealed that he was most likely George Harrison, who met his end following a duel with Richard Stephens. The fatal injury shows that the bullet struck Mr. Harrison’s leg to the side of the knee. At the time, a typical dueling pose was to stand sideways with your arm and flinklock pistol extended towards your opponant. But the injury is in an unusual location as most duellers would aim for the upper body, a larger target with more vital organs. So was Mr. Stephens a bad shot, or was he aiming to cripple?

There is also some question about the type of ammunition used in the duel. What killed Mr. Harrison was a ‘combat round’ that contained a large main bullet as well as smaller lead shot. Duelling ammunition of the time typically only involved a single lead ball. It is believed that a combat round of this type would not be used in a duel by an honest and honourable combatant.

Richard Stephens, who survived the duel and later went into politics, died in 1636.

Photo credit: Jamestown Rediscovery