Two teenage girls, sisters a year apart, are in a terrible auto accident near where they live, a few miles from the Civil War battlefield at Shiloh. The older is killed outright. The younger is badly brain-damaged. In a coma, she meets people who are dressed oddly, who speak English but not quite the English she speaks. Eventually she comes out of the coma, but continues to see and talk with these people whom the reader soon identifies as doctors, nurses, and soldiers- Northern and Southern- who are on their way to Shiloh to fight a great Civil War battle. The girl is befriending people of the last century who are soon to die. As fascinating as these occurrences are, they are associated with the girl's refusal to accept the death of her sister. Indeed, her doctors expect the girl herself to die of her own injuries. But she fools everybody, and by witnessing the deaths of her Civil War-era friends she is able to come to terms with the loss of her sister.
I was born on a USAF base in New Mexico. My father was a sergeant. My mother was a registered nurse at what was then St. Joseph's hospital. We lived in the village of Corrales alongside the Rio Grande. We had horses, cows, chickens, rabbits, ducks, turkeys, a sheep dog, a bloodhound, and a big bossy cat. My childhood best friend was Janice Gruber. She is, by the way, still my very best friend. I've lived in quite a few places. The longest residences have been California and New Mexico. I received my Bachelor of Science from Loma Linda University of Medicine and Allied Health Professions. I received my Masters with double majors in education and counseling from California State University. I later obtained certification in evaluations, often referred to as psychometrics, from California State University. I spent most of my career working as an occupational therapist. I've also worked as a counselor for the courts, which is often referred to as a forensic counselor. I've worked as a regular counselor. And I've been a published writer for most of my life. Fiction is my favorite form of writing, and mysteries are my favorite brand of fiction. My brother and both my parents have passed on, and I now rely more than ever on my very important family of friends, who are spread out all across the United States, and a few across the ocean.
I was first launched into writing when colleagues would ask me to write up a procedure I'd come up with in clinical treatment applications for upper extremity and hand injuries. The surgeon I worked with told me I was wasting my time doing that, because it took so long to write something up for one or two people. He suggested I write the procedures as professional articles and send them to journals, where thousands of my peers could read them. Everything I wrote was published, and usually reprinted in other journals. The years went by and I had dozens of professional articles in print around the country. Gradually, I began to see short story themes cropping up. Things would happen around me that seemed to need further exploration. All of my short stories grew out of real events. They are, of course, total fiction, but they had origins. For instance, Boss Joe Dan is one of my most popular short stories. The idea came to me one very hot afternoon in Riverside, California. A service center was changing my car's oil. I walked across the street and found a shady place to sit beneath a big magnolia tree. A man in a green jaguar pulled up curbside. He strolled by and paused to chat for a few minutes. By the cut of his hair, the type clothes he wore, his shoes, and his general word choices while talking, I'd sized him up to be an undercover detective. Not far from our location a homeless man was searching a garbage bin. He pulled out a few items and brought them to a table nearby. He carefully inspected each food item before eating it, but he did eat the dumpster food. The jaguar driver told me the man had been a medical doctor from up North. He said something went really bad in the man's life, and here is where he'd ended up. Days passed and I couldn't forget any aspect of that hour in the park. I began to write and my imagination took over. Boss Joe Dan was first published in a commercial magazine in Ohio. It was later reprinted in a mystery-horror magazine.
As for books, they grow in a similar fashion. Years ago while working as a forensic counselor with the courts, I was at a county courthouse waiting for several people I had appointments to meet. A sheriff's deputy who I knew arrived looking for one of the people I was waiting for. His name was Sergeant Louie Sena. I'd seldom seen anyone as bothered and seemingly tormented. I learned he'd just returned from a high speed pursuit through three counties, and he'd finally apprehended a man who'd pulled off the freeway and cut his own young son's head off, in front of freeway traffic. When all the people I was scheduled to meet with arrived, we ended up brewing a pot of coffee in the judge's chambers and sitting, not talking, just sitting, sharing coffee. It was one of the most profound moments of my life. A few years later, GHOST in the RAINBOW turned into a fast paced suspense mystery thriller. It was, of course, a product of that event.
I will add more on another day.
