David Freed

A Horse Named Deep Fury

All I know about horse racing is what I learned reading Laura Hillenbrand’s excellent Seabiscuit and the movie based on it. Both were about an underdog horse and a down-on-his luck jockey who together won a big race and inspired many people to persevere during the Great Depression. When I was in college, I also read William Faulker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Reivers, which as I vaguely recall has something to do with horse racing, though the main story centers on three rascals who steal a car in rural Mississippi. I’ve also attended a few parties over the years at which the Kentucky Derby was televised, however I typically was too busy eating and bending an elbow to pay much attention to who crossed the finish line first. In person, I’ve watched the ponies run (is that still an expression?) exactly once in my life. Several years ago, my wife and I spent an afternoon at Hollywood Park, a thoroughbred race course located below the final approach path of the west-facing runways at Los Angeles International Airport. The track isn’t there anymore. It was demolished years ago to make way for a professional football stadium. The only thing I remember from that day at Hollywood Park was making several $2 bets on different horses based on gut hunch and whether we liked the colors of the jockeys’ racing silks. Suffice it to say, fools and their money are soon parted. All of which leads me to an email I received the other day from a fan in Australia named William who wrote to tell me how much he enjoyed Deep Fury, my most recent Cordell Logan mystery novel. He also was curious to know if I’d stolen the book’s title from an Australian race horse that also happens to be named Deep Fury. I was surprised. I’d never heard of Deep Fury, the horse. “Mere coincidence,” I responded. “And what kind of name is that for a horse, anyway? What do they call him for short—Deep?” William, who said he tends bar at a swanky hotel in Brisbane, disregarded my albeit rhetorical question and responded appropriately enough with a joke about a horse that walks into a bar. The bartender asks the horse, “Why the long face?” I’m still working on a clever response. Meanwhile, I’ve done a bit of research on my new equine relative. I discovered looking at pictures of him on line that Deep Fury the horse is quite a handsome lad. He’s a five-year-old bay gelding whose home track is the Sunshine Coast Turf Club on Australia’s west coast, about an hour north of Brisbane, near the totally cool-sounding towns of Currimundi and Caloundra. He’s run 27 races as of this writing and won two of them, earning purses totaling $95,200 Australian dollars, which is about $59,400 in US dollars. Not exactly Seabiscuit money but, hey, you’ve gotta start somewhere. There’s a lesson here, I think. As a writer of mystery novels, I’ve always been fascinated by fiction, as with real life itself, can often take unexpected turns. My random connection to a horse named Deep Fury is a good example. It reminds me how fiction and reality can sometimes intersect in wonderous ways. In my books, I thrive on those kinds of intersections–the twists and subtle details that keep readers guessing in the same unpredictable yet plausible ways we all face every day. Writing mysteries is about creating layers of intrigue, where nothing is ever quite as it seems. When my friend William first informed me of about Deep Fury, the horse, I figured it was just a coincidence in names. But the more I’ve pondered it, the more it feels to me like some small clue—a link between stories real and imagined, and in ways I could’ve never anticipated. It is these kinds of unanticipated encounters where my belief in kismet is affirmed, and in the realization that the best stories often arrive from the most obscure places. It’s not always the obvious twists that matter, but the ones we least expect. Whether in a mystery novel or in real life, discovery is what keeps us moving forward. Who knows? The next plot twist might come from an email, a corny joke, or even a horse halfway across the world.

The Fighting 99th

Most folks, I suspect, have a favorite ball cap. This one, with its sweat stains and frayed brim, happens to be mine. I’ve worn it for several years, but in all the time, however, I can recall only one person ever making mention of the blue and gold winged panther sewn on its crown.   We were at a restaurant a few years back in Colorado Springs. The receptionist, an African American woman in her early 20’s, was guiding us to our table. “I like your hat,” she said, smiling at me over her shoulder. “The Fighting 99th.” That anyone especially so young would recognize the unit patch worn by fighter pilots of the 99th Pursuit Squadron, the famed, all-Black Tuskegee Airmen who flew against Hitler’s Luftwaffe in World War II, left me a little stunned. I asked her how she knew about the 99th.   “My great-grandfather,” she said, “was a Tuskegee airman.”   The pride in her eyes as she told me that was something I’ll never forget.   Anyone who has ever studied American military history knows the inspirational story of the Tuskegee Airmen. Treated as second-class citizens because of the color of their skin, they overcame every obstacle imaginable, first learning to fly in rural, racist Alabama, before distinguishing themselves in the hostile skies over Europe. Along the way, they became known as the “Red Tails” by virtue of the distinctive color with which they adorned the empennages of their P-47 Thunderbolts and P-51 Mustangs. So fabled were their achievements in combat that more than 70 years later, in 2018, when U.S. Air Force commanders were debating what name to assign their new primary jet trainer, the Boeing-Saab T-7, they chose the “Red Hawk” and ordered the jets’ tails painted red to honor those Tuskegee warriors.   I’ve always dreamed of flying a Mustang. I never have. I’ve never even been in one. I was born long after the end of World War II and, for the record, I’m not Black. So you might be asking, what business does a guy like me have wearing a ball cap sporting a Tuskegee squadron patch? The simple answer is this: Every time I do, I am reminded of the debt of gratitude we owe to those men, and to the millions of others of every ethnicity who fought and sometimes died to leave our world a better, fairer, more equal place.   Which brings me to Donald Trump.   To comply with his crackdown on diversity, equality, and inclusion initiatives, it was reported this weekend that the Air Force had removed from its basic training courses all videos of the Tuskegee Airmen. Also scrapped were videos featuring the WASPs, the Women Airforce Service Pilots who played a vital role ferrying military aircraft during the war. Not a day later, apparently bowing to public pressure, the Trump Administration reversed course and announced that the videos would remain in the Air Force’s basic training curriculum.    While I can’t conceive what cultural harm could possibly come of teaching new Air Force recruits about the courage and sacrifices of such extraordinary heroes, I can easily envision the dangers posed in redrafting history, as Trump and his minions appear to be attempting to do.   To marginalize or exclude the contributions made to the common good by any group is to erase their presence in the shared story of our nation. By failing to acknowledge the unique achievements and sacrifices made by heroes who first had to overcome scorn and hate from their own countrymen, we risk not only distorting the past but also spitting on the very values that made America great—perseverance and unity in the face of unimaginable adversity. By deleting the stories of trailblazers like the Tuskegee Airmen and the WASPs, we also deny future generations of vital role models–the very individuals who represent the best of what we as a people have always strived to be.   The legacy left by these pioneers—who fought both on the front lines and against the prejudices of their own country—is not merely a story of military valor; it is a testament to the strength of the human spirit, and to the conviction that ability is not defined by the color of one’s skin or gender, but indeed by the content of one’s character. None of those pioneers served to gain celebrity or riches. They did so because they believed in the promise of a better, more just America. To blot out their stories as if they never existed is to ignore their influence in whatever progress we’ve made toward achieving the kind of America for which they fought so hard.   And, so, until it falls off my head from use, I will continue wearing my well-loved cap with its squadron patch honoring the pilots of the Fighting 99th, both as a testament to their bravery and as my responsibility to help ensure in my small way that their story is not forgotten. Whether in the skies or on the ground, the Tuskegee Airmen and all those who served alongside them strived to pave the way for a future in which every American would have the opportunity to soar. We owe it to them—and to ourselves—to keep their stories alive, to remind the world that “Make America Great” is more than a political slogan. It is courage; it is self-sacrifice; it is devotion to a transcendent ideal, as yet unrealized, of that shining city on the hill.

Deep Fury

A naked man drops from the night sky and crashes through the roof of a mobile home, nearly killing the elderly couple inside. The victim is soon identified as Pete Hostetler, a well-respected executive at a California-based toy manufacturing company. But detectives are baffled, and there are no leads. Did he accidentally fall out of an airplane or was he pushed? For Cordell Logan–a sardonic, financially struggling flight instructor and former government assassin–Hostetler’s death is personal. The two men were classmates at the US Air Force Academy and later served together as fighter pilots during Operation Desert Storm, where Hostetler saved Logan’s life during one particularly perilous combat mission in Iraq. Logan is convinced Pete was murdered. But who would’ve killed someone in such bizarre fashion, and why? Determined to avenge his battle buddy’s death, Logan starts digging and discovers nothing is as it seems, and that he may not have known Hostetler as well as he thought. Soon a vexing trail of clues lead him and his aging Cessna, the Ruptured Duck, across California, deep into Mexico, and relentlessly into harm’s way Facebook Instagram Tumblr Praise for Deep Fury A high-flying, high-octane thrill ride, Deep Fury by David Freed is the long awaited seventh installment of the bestselling Cordell Logan Mysteries. Keep reading for Doreen’s review. The seventh installment of the Cordell Logan mystery series finds our former fighter pilot turned flight instructor (and aspiring private investigator) trying not to get involved with his nonagenarian landlady Mrs. Schmulowitz’s quixotic run for city council. While he has no interest in politics, he’s also perfectly happy to be living in Mrs. Schmulowitz’s garage, no matter what his girlfriend has to say about it. Layne Sterling is a former CIA agent who is bright, beautiful, and a total catch. She thinks it’s high time that she and Logan moved into grown-up accommodations of their own, despite Logan’s reluctance to leave his admittedly high-energy landlady to her own devices. Those arguments are all put on the back burner, however, when he learns that the hitherto unidentified dead body that recently fell out of the sky some towns over belongs to his former Air Force wingman Pete “Chocks” Hostetler. Feeling guilty at having fallen out of touch, Logan flies his Cessna 172, the Ruptured Duck, the hour or so to Chocks’ last known address in Santa Isabella to pay his respects to Chocks’ widow. Miranda Hostetler paints a very different picture of his former wingman than Logan was familiar with. According to the seething Miranda, Chocks was an abusive drunk who was involved in shady business, a far cry from the upright airman Logan knew. Instead of shaking his memories of the man, this contradiction only underscores Logan’s determination to figure out how Chocks had come to be thrown out of an aircraft, naked, to his unceremonious death. Layne, of course, wants to know more about why Logan feels so much loyalty to someone he hadn’t even spoken to in years. As briefly as he can, Logan tells her about one particular mission he’d run with Chocks during Desert Storm: I told her about ejecting, hitting the ground hard, scrambling out of my rig, and taking cover in a dry river channel with my pistol, my mouth as dry as sand, hoping my emergency locator transmitter still worked. I could see a column of enemy troop carriers–what looked like an entire mechanized infantry company–coming to get me.   “Then, out of nowhere, here comes Chocks, blazing away. One pass after another, blowing up bad guys. He stayed on station until he was almost out of fuel. Kept ‘em pinned down until I could get out. He took a thirty-seven-millimeter round in his leg. Broke the femur. Ran out of gas coming into Khalid. Had to dead-stick the landing. They quit counting the shell holes in his airplane when they got to two hundred.[“] While he knows he can never repay his former wingman for saving his life, Logan is determined to find out who killed Chocks and to subsequently avenge his fallen friend. His investigations bring him to the attention of some powerful and very dangerous people, but it might very well be his own recklessness that does him in. Even if he does escape death in his pursuit of the truth, will he be able to keep his relationship with an increasingly frustrated Layne alive? As he doggedly chases down leads while flying around California, he can’t help but think about how he’s in danger of losing her: There was no mistaking it for anything other than a private strip […] Only in emergencies are general aviation pilots allowed to land at such airfields without prior permission.   So that’s what I had–an “emergency.”   I pulled the mixture to idle cutoff and switched off the ignition. As I glided in, dead-stick style, Layne popped into my head, how she was all about planning and preparing for any contingency, while I was all about winging it, adapting on the fly, and overcoming. Our respective approaches to problem-solving were antithetical to each other. Maybe Layne and I were fundamentally antithetical to each other, too. I tried not to think of her. Deep Fury has all the swagger of late 20th-century action thrillers while realistically updating circumstances for the 21st century. David Freed is an award-winning journalist and a licensed pilot who knows how to accurately capture the nuances of both real and larger-than-life situations, as his protagonist juggles a complex murder investigation with personal tribulations. The cast of colorful characters doesn’t necessarily make the best individual choices, but that only adds to the convincingness of the story, as Logan’s unwavering sense of loyalty guides him through his journey toward truth and justice, no matter the personal cost. Doreen Sheridan from criminalelement.com “David Freed’s Deep Fury has been a long time coming, I think around nearly eight years, and it was absolutely worth the wait. As the seventh entry in the Cordell Logan Mysteries series, it brings us back into the world

Between What Once Was and What Could Have Been

What happens when you write a novel, setting much of it in the real world, and then part of that real world is erased before the novel can be published? This was my dilemma in writing The Impossible Turn, my eighth and newest Cordell Logan mystery. A fair amount of the story originally took place in Malibu, California, where I drew references to actual streets I’ve driven on over the years, real stores where I’ve shopped, and landmark restaurants like Moonshadows and the Reel Inn, where I’ve enjoyed more than my share of good seafood. I was a couple of days away from finishing and emailing the completed manuscript to my agent when the Santa Anas began blowing last week at hurricane strength. Suddenly, it seemed, much of Los Angeles was burning. I reside up the coast and far enough away from all the fires that my family and I were not threatened. My greater and more immediate concern, of course, was for the safety of many friends and former colleagues who live in the LA area, particularly those I worked with at the Los Angeles Times. At least half-a-dozen, and likely others I’m not aware of as I write this, lost their homes. I can’t begin to imagine their anguish, nor that of the thousands of other victims of what may prove to be the most expensive natural disaster in modern American history. And so, it is the context of that almost incomprehensible tragedy that I hope you’ll forgive my bemoaning the relatively trivial inconvenience of having to rewrite a work of fiction to keep up with current events. Such, however, is the lot of any novelist who aspires to achieve believability in the make-believe stories they spin. As the smoke began clearing and the extent of the catastrophe became known, I reread the latest draft of The Impossible Turn and confirmed what I already feared–that neighborhoods I’d included in detail had burned to the ground. My need to rewrite was obvious; how I would go about that rewrite was less so. I figured I had three options: I could revise the plot and have the story play out well before the fires, making no mention of the catastrophe, but that struck me as contrary to my previous books, all of which were intended to convey a sense of current day. I envisioned getting letters from confused readers demanding to know, “When exactly does this book take place??” Or… I could set the story after the fires. But given that it takes at least a year and typically longer before a finished book finally hits the shelves, I realized I could not predict with any accuracy what the aftermath of the fires might look like. Will Pacific Coast Highway, where oceanfront mansions once stood, still be ash and rubble, or will reconstruction be well underway? Hey, I’m merely a humble scribe, not a fortune teller. Or… I could erase from my story any reference to Malibu and the Palisades and simply shift that part of the plot a few miles inland to, say, the Hollywood Hills.    In the end, it was this third option that seemed most viable to me. If you’ve ever spent time in the LA basin, you might better understand why I made the choice I did. The late Dorothy Parker once described Los Angeles as, “Seventy-two suburbs in search of a city.” She wasn’t wrong. The sprawling, amorphous mass known as LA, with its more than 18 million residents, defies the traditional definition of community. If you live in Beverly Hills, for example, or basically anywhere west of LaCienega Boulevard, you’re likely not much interested in what goes down in Compton or out in Pacoima. Indeed, it’s been my experience that Angelenos, figuratively speaking, tend to wear blinders. They embrace a mindset that says, in effect, “Good or bad, if it didn’t happen in my immediate neighborhood, it didn’t happen. Period.” Believe me, I know of what I speak, having lived there for ten years. My children back then attended school at Mt. Washington Elementary, which was right around the corner from our house. Every morning after dropping them off, my wife and/or I would spend a few minutes chatting in the parking lot with other parents, our neighbors. On one particular Monday morning, I can vividly remember expressing my concern about a shooting that had occurred the previous Saturday night in nearby Glassell Park. A young family like ours had taken an unfortunate turn down a wrong street, where gang members opened fire on their minivan in the mistaken belief that those in the vehicle were rival thugs. A toddler was killed in her car seat. Two days later, standing there outside our local elementary school, my neighbors seemed not to share my concern about what had happened. “That was Glassell Park,” one of the other dads said, “not Mt. Washington.” For the record, Glassell Park is more or less adjacent to Mt. Washington, and about a mile away as the crow flies from where we were gathered in that parking lot. It was that kind of isolationist, denialism thinking, that ultimately compelled my wife and me to decamp with our kids and move away from LA. My neighbors’ disregard over what had happened to that family in Glassell Park is little different, I’m convinced, than what will likely occur in the aftermath of last week’s firestorms. Many Angelinos not directly affected by them will soon forget they ever occurred. They’ll put their blinders back on and go about their lives in their little corners of those seventy-two suburbs as if nothing ever happened. But who knows? Maybe that kind of collective memory loss is a good thing for novelists. It provides the perfect soil in which to grow fiction, where the rawness of tragedy and fragility are reshaped into something surreal and profound. Amid Los Angeles’ boundless distractions, all that noise and glitter and grime, there exists a canvas on which

Chaucer Book Signing – Jan 16 at 6 pm

Date:01/16/2025 Time: 6:00pm – 7:00pm Place: Chaucer’s Books3321 State StreetSanta Barbara, CA 93105-2623 Join bestselling author David Freed for a thrilling evening of mystery and suspense at his book signing event for “Deep Fury”! Mark your calendars for January 16, 2025, at 6:00 PM and prepare to delve into the captivating world of Cordell Logan, a former government assassin turned flight instructor, as he navigates a treacherous web of deceit and danger in the seventh installment of the acclaimed Cordell Logan Mysteries series. In “Deep Fury,” a bizarre murder plunges Logan into a high-stakes investigation that will challenge his skills and test his loyalties. When a naked man falls from the sky and crashes into a mobile home, Logan is drawn into the mystery surrounding the victim’s identity and the motive behind his gruesome demise. As he digs deeper, he uncovers shocking secrets and realizes that nothing is as it seems. This gripping thriller will take you on a whirlwind journey across California and deep into Mexico, as Logan races against time to uncover the truth and avenge his fallen comrade. With twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat, “Deep Fury” is a must-read for fans of mystery, suspense, and action-packed adventure. Don’t miss this opportunity to meet David Freed, get your copy of “Deep Fury” signed, and hear firsthand about the inspiration behind this thrilling new addition to the Cordell Logan Mysteries. Event Details:

My Jimmy Carter Moment

Several years ago, on a dark day of deep despair, a silly idea came to me—one that would eventually become a silly book, while finding me crossing paths with a former President of the United States who was anything but silly. I was working back then in the entertainment industry, writing film scripts for the major studios, TV networks, and independent producers. My annual income could best be described as boom or bust. Some years I earned very little. In others, I made vastly more money than I could’ve ever begun to imagine at the Los Angeles Times, where I had toiled as a reporter for more than a decade. On balance, it was a comfortable living, one that allowed me to escape Los Angeles with my family and buy a home with an ocean view two hours up the coast in lovely Santa Barbara. But the more time I spent writing movies, the more disillusioned and frustrated I became. I grew tired of fighting LA traffic and having to attend pitch meetings to propose my movie ideas that more often than not went nowhere; of being jacked around by conniving development executives who professed to love my ideas, then hired other screenwriters to write them; and of seeing my best scripts get rejected outright or rewritten so extensively that by the time they were produced—what few actually made it to the screen–they bore scant resemblance to my original work. Thus it was while sitting at my desk one afternoon, stewing over my latest misadventure in Hollywood, that the idea hit me: I need to find another job. Suddenly, as if guided by some occult hand, I found myself typing up a list of possible employment opportunities, each one more preposterous than the next, but any one of which, I was convinced, would be way more fun than screenwriting. I could become a chair tester for La-Z-Boy, getting paid to sit on my duff all day. Maybe I could shoot hoops for the Harlem Globetrotters, or go be a wine taster for some major vintner (back then) like Ernest and Julio Gallo. I could train whales for Sea World. I could sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The list of dream jobs became virtually endless! My one big problem, I realized, was that I was uniquely unqualified to take on any of those jobs. But then I thought, Wait a minute. This is America! Since when did a lack of qualifications stop anybody from doing anything? And so, more for grins than the prospects of actual gainful employment, and just to see what kinds of responses I’d get, I began mailing out dozens of goofy application letters under the nom de plume, “Fred Grimes,” a likeable, somewhat less-than-articulate guy with a can-do, never-say-die attitude who’d unfortunately lost his job “down at the plant”, and was looking to reinvent himself in the Land of Opportunity. The letters spawned replies that ranged from equally goofy to deadly serious. The head of the Tabernacle Choir pointed out rather stuffily that one had to be a member of the Mormon Church with “considerable training and vocal experience” to join his choir—and that each vocalist was a volunteer. The job, he said, didn’t pay a dime. Meanwhile, over at Gallo, the head of consumer relations wrote back to report that, “Unfortunately, if we had a job of wine taster, the applicant’s line would indeed be quite long. Sorry!!” Sea World in San Diego responded with, “Although we were impressed with your resume, we have found other candidates who more closely suit our needs at this time.” Fred had sent no resume; only that he “had a way with animals” after having trained the family cat to do a few tricks. The Globetrotters, to whom Fred had written admitting that he was just “an average unemployed American who is white”, and who couldn’t play basketball to save his life, but who could “whistle the heck out of Sweet Georgia Brown”, the Globetrotter’s theme song, got the joke. They responded with a friendly thanks but no thanks while urging Fred to, “Keep whistling!” Then Fred wrote to Jimmy Carter. “You’re making a big mistake building all those houses for the poor,” he advised the former President. “Sir, why not build houses for the rich? You could call them ‘Jimmy Carter Homes,’ or ‘Homes by Jimmy Carter.’ I bet a lot of rich folks would buy them just to tell their friends, ‘Guess who hung my drywall?’ Fred bragged that he was pretty handy around the house, having recently installed a new kitchen sink, and urged the former President to hire him as his construction foreman. A couple of weeks later, I ventured outside to the mailbox to find an envelope bearing a return address in Plains, Georgia–the same address I was to discover later where Carter in 1961 had built a modest, ranch-style home while helping run his family’s peanut farm and warehouse business, and where he and his wife, Rosalynn, still resided. Folded inside the envelope was the original letter I had sent him as Fred Grimes. Hand-written on the upper-right corner was a note from Carter himself: “Fred—Thanks for your idea. When all the poor have homes, we can start on the rich. –Jimmy C.” That letter, and dozens of others from Fred, along with their responses, would eventually find their way into a modest, nonfiction book–Dear Ernest and Julio, the Ordinary Guy’s Search for the Extraordinary Job, by Fred Grimes, with David Freed. Published by St. Martin’s Press, it’s been out of print for a while, but you can still find used copies for cheap on eBay if you’re at all interested. Not long after Dear Ernest and Julio was published, my wife and I visited Plains, Georgia. It was an easy drive from Albany, Georgia, where I was born, and not far from Fort Benning, where our then-19-year-old son, who today is a US Army major stationed at the Pentagon, was graduating

Publication Day!

Deep Fury, my seventh Cordell Logan mystery, debuts today. The publication of a new book is always a thrilling if not tremulous occasion for any author, regardless of how many titles they’ve already put out there. Will readers enjoy what I’ve written this time? Will the critics be kind? Will I sell enough copies so that I don’t have to go out and find a real job somewhere, like Home Depot? Fingers crossed. New books come with plenty of responsibilities, not the least of which is remembering to acquire enough copies for your freeloading buddies who are too cheap to buy their own. But perhaps the most important obligation these days is the necessity of promoting your own book. It’s a function that, frankly speaking, I find uncomfortable and usually have to be arm-twisted into doing. Back in the day, your typically introverted novelist (read: pretty much all novelists) could sit back with the doors locked and shades drawn, box up their new manuscript, and send it off to their editors laissez-faire, never having to trifle much with tooting their own horns once the book was released. These days, publishers expect authors to be self-motivated, marketing whizbangs. It’s all about “building your brand” and “extending your reach” on social media with blog posts like the one you’re currently reading. We’re talking search engine optimization, dear friends, not to mention meta descriptions, backlinks, keyword density, and a myriad of other Digital Age terminology, much of which my old-school, analog brain simply fails to comprehend. The good news is that I have some wonderful experts in my corner willing to hold my hand as I navigate this largely bewildering process. These include, most notably, my website guru, Blake O’Ruairi, who is as Irish as his name sounds, and my lead publicist, the ever-charming Tatiana Radujkovic, who works for Blackstone, my publisher. If there’s anything I do understand about the art and science of self-promotion, and one that I do enjoy, it’s the need to get out there and get together with the folks who like reading mysteries. Toward that end, though the details are yet to be worked out, I hope to be appearing in 2025 at a bookstore somewhere in your time zone. Meanwhile. I’m already anticipating questions I’ll get from interested readers, mainly because I’ve been asked many of them before. The one that always seems to come up is the one I can never adequately answer: How do you come up with your ideas? I’m not trying to be glib here, but the process is a mystery in itself. I’ve asked other writers the same question, and their answer is always more or less the same. “The idea usually finds me, not the other way around,” they’ll say, or some iteration thereof. That’s definitely how it works with me. I’ll be taking a shower, or playing catch with the dog, or snoozing at 3:30 in the morning, and, shazam, some random synapse will fire deep inside my skull, and the fundamental notion for a book will come bubbling to the surface. Wow, I’ll think to myself, this could make for a terrific plot! Then I’ll typically chew on the concept for a few days, do some snooping around on the internet, and almost always reject the idea. Often, it’s because it or some iteration of it has been done before, and well, by another writer. Sometimes I’ll conclude that the idea is too simple or too complex, or that I’d have to devote the next two years researching the subject before I could achieve the kind of verisimilitude that would permit readers to maintain their suspension of disbelief, which is key to all good fiction. But every once in a while, an idea will stick. Such was the case with what ultimately became Deep Fury. I was sipping coffee and reading the news online one morning about three years ago when I stumbled across a bizarre story. A British soldier practicing high-altitude parachute drops with his unit had crashed through the Spanish tile roof of a home in central California, not far from where I live, after his main chute failed to open. The soldier was forced to deploy his reserve parachute and fortunately sustained only minor injuries. No one inside the home was hurt. I immediately thought to myself, This has potential! What if a guy falls out of the sky to his death, only naked and without a parachute, and crashes through the roof of a mobile home where an elderly couple lives? What if the guy once served as Cordell Logan’s wingman, back when they were both Air Force fighter pilots flying combat missions during Operation Desert Storm? And what if plenty of people had reason to want the guy dead? Three hundred-plus pages later, I finished Deep Fury. I hope you like it. If you do, please help spread the word by posting a brief review on Amazon or Goodreads. And also, if you have a good idea for Logan’s next adventure, I’m all ears.

Chemtrails and My Friend Flicka

I came across some startling statistics the other day. According to the National Literacy Institute, 54% of American adults read below a 6th-grade level. One in five is considered functionally illiterate. Perhaps no less sobering, America’s literacy rate ranks 36th in the world–behind Ukraine, Russia, Cuba, Finland, and even North Korea. For somebody like me who earns his keep largely from the printed word, and who aspires to offer more sophisticated prose than those found in, say, My Friend Flicka or Jack and Jill magazine, these numbers are disconcerting, and not merely because it means fewer prospective customers willing to buy my Cordell Logan books. There are no doubt many reasons to explain why more than half of us, if the numbers are to believed, read at the same level we did entering puberty, when our ability to think critically is still largely undeveloped. Digital distractions? The time constraints of modern life? Our ever-decreasing attention spans? Whatever the explanations, the fact remains that reading is vital in learning how to objectively assess evidence, recognize cognitive biases, and question unreliable sources. Learning to read critically empowers people to function more analytically, to resist the emotional and cognitive traps that often accompany wildly unscientific, unfounded beliefs otherwise known as conspiracy theories. Consider, for example, “chemtrails”. Those who believe they’re real contend that chemtrails (short for “chemical trails,” which not to be confused with “contrails,” short for condensation trails) are part of a government plot using commercial jetliners to spray dangerous chemicals on We The People for top-secret purpose. These purposes range from politically motivated weather manipulation and mind control to all manner of covert geoengineering. Believers refuse to accept the proven science of contrails, which form when hot, moist air from aircraft engines meets cold air at high altitude. Exhaust gases produce water vapor that condenses into tiny water droplets or ice crystals, creating visible but otherwise harmless streaks in the sky. The more wind in the atmosphere, the more squiggly the lines. I found myself not long ago unwittingly in the middle of a chemtrails/contrails debate. I waiting in the checkout line at my local hardware store, when I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation taking place in the next line over–although “conversation” in this case would be a misnomer. A bearded, middle-aged, somewhat wild-eyed guy was intently lecturing an older woman standing in line in front of him about the dangers of chemtrails and how the government was out to screw us all. She listened to him mutely if not politely, nodding in places, raising her eyebrows occasionally in surprise, but I could tell by the set of her jaw and the way she wouldn’t meet his eyes that the guy making her a little uncomfortable. I figured it was none of my business. The guy looked harmless enough. So I decided not to intervene. That changed after I paid for my purchase and headed out to the parking lot. Mr. Chemtrails had followed her out of the store and was still telling her all about mysterious sky-spraying and the “Deep State” and how the lamestream media was covering the whole thing up while she loaded the plants she’d bought into her hatchback. She was parked a few stalls away, with her back turned to me. I reminded myself that the world is filled with misinformed individuals and that you can’t educate them all. But as I backed my truck out and started to drive away, I could see by her expression that she just wanted the guy to leave her alone. I stopped and rolled down my window. “Not to interrupt your lecture,” I said to him, “but that’s the biggest bunch of bullshit I’ve ever heard in my life. There’s no such thing as chemtrails.” “That’s what I thought!” the woman blurted out with a look of noticeable relief. I told the guy I was a pilot, and his notion that legions of other pilots would knowingly or otherwise participate in a secret plot to poison the population was preposterous. All he had to do, I said, was look at footage of the condensation trails made by American bomber formations over Germany and Japan during World War II. Was the government back then out to poison the enemy and blow them up, too? How was it possible that after 80-plus years, with all those tens of thousands of airmen supposedly in on the plan, that the “truth” of chemtrails could remain hidden from the public? “You need to get out of your information silo,” I said, “and read some established, respected scientific journals about how contrails are formed. Do your own research. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own set of facts.” The guy stared at me blankly, then responded in a way I didn’t expect. “Thank you,” is all he said. I drove on. Was I rude in butting in the way I did? Maybe. Did I help change his mind? I’ll never know. But I do know one thing: learning to read analytically is key to the attainment of knowledge, and knowledge is power. We’re going to need a lot of power if we are to save ourselves (and innocent weekend gardeners) from the peddlers of mistruths who prey increasingly upon the ill-informed among us.

No Throat-Clearing

Among the graduate-level courses I teach at Harvard University’s Extension School is one called “Fact to Fiction.” The course emphasizes how the skills required of a journalist can prove invaluable when crafting novels and short stories. I encourage my students to think like news reporters, crafting clean, succinct copy while exercising a keen eye for real-world details that can make their prose more believable. A key lesson is learning how to start a story with a bang.             In my opinion, a good opening–what journalists call a “lede” (and, yes, that’s how it’s spelled)—is little different from an avalanche that starts out as a snowslide and quickly builds power as it rolls downhill. Powerful fiction as far as I’m concerned is no different. To be effective, it must be engaging from the get-go. Forget opening with some long bit of exposition, trying to explain what happened before the story begins. No pussyfooting around. No easing into it. I call that “throat-clearing.” Think about when you go to a concert. Do you really want to listen to the band or orchestra tune up while the lead singer or soloist run through their scales before they launch into the music? I’m guessing not. The same is true with fiction. Immediacy and impact are what we want. Give the reader the impression straight away that they’ve stumbled into something exciting. Be brief. Be original. And think cinematically. Kurt Vonnegut believed in starting his stories “with an event that will create a reaction” on the reader’s part. Gabriel Garcia Marquez envisioned his openings as a “kind of invitation to a journey.” Likewise, Margaret Atwood has compared the beginnings of her stories to “the opening of a door” the reader must step through. I couldn’t agree more with any of them. But as a writer of murder mystery novels, I’d go one step further: A good beginning must also implicitly pose a question: Who got killed, why did they get killed, and who killed them? Along with that question comes an implicit promise to the reader that says, in effect, “Read to the end, and you’ll find out.” Consider Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. The novel opens with a question about what happened to Amy. Stick with me, dear reader, Flynn implies, and you’ll find out. Or Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It opens with the unresolved disappearance of Harriet Vanger. This prompts readers to wonder about her fate. Stick with me, dear reader, Larsson implies, and you’ll find out. Or the opening of The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena, which hints at the mysterious circumstances of a missing baby, casting suspicion on her parents. Stick with me, dear reader, Lapena implies, and you’ll find out. Most authors, this one included, will tell you that first few paragraphs are the most important ones. They’re designed to set the hook, to get readers so interested in your story that they won’t be able to put down the rest of it. Getting those lede paragraphs just right isn’t easy. I’ve been known to rewrite mine dozens of times before finally surrendering to exhaustion and submitting them for publication. Here’s what I finally settled on with Flat Spin, my first Cordell Logan mystery: Arlo Echevarria opened his door in flip-flops and a foul mood.                                                  “You got the wrong address, dude. I didn’t order any pizza.” The Domino’s guy stood there mutely on the front step, cap pulled low, face obscured in the dim buttery glow of Echevarria’s jelly jar porch light, cradling a pizza hot pouch in both arms like it was baby Jesus. “What are you, deaf? I said you got the wrong address.” Echevarria went to push the door closed, but the Domino’s guy blocked it with his foot, drawing a blue steel semi-auto from the red vinyl pouch. Echevarria yelled, “Wait a—” Boom. The .40-caliber hollow point splintered rib bone and mushroomed through Echevarria’s left lung, blowing a kebab-size chunk of flesh out his back and dropping him like 164 pounds of wet laundry. Boom. Boom. Slugs two and three made pulp of Echevarria’s liver and spleen. The coroner would deem all three wounds potentially fatal. Any cynical street cop, which is to say, any cop, would deem them all sweet, sweet shooting: three rounds, center mass, square in the 10-ring. The Domino’s guy tucked the pistol up under his shirt, then calmly gathered his spent brass, depositing each casing in the hot pouch before disappearing into a pleasantly temperate San Fernando Valley evening. The tang of cordite lingered on the breeze with the perfume of night-blooming jasmine. And here’s what I came up with for Deep Fury, my newest Logan mystery, which debuts December 17th: Long after the naked man plummeted from the night sky and exploded like a bomb through the roof of Walt and Lena Rizzo’s double-wide mobile home in the Sun Country RV and Trailer Park, Walt couldn’t decide if it was the dog or divine providence that had saved his wife’s life. It was after supper. The elderly couple were watching Dancing with the Stars with the sound turned way up when their miniature schnauzer, Rambo, who also answered to “Rambie” and “RamRam,” began pawing at the door so he could go do his business outside. Walt’s knees were acting up again—all those years laying tile for all those rich snobs up in Knob Hill and Pacific Heights— but he willed himself out of his recliner anyway to let the dog out because he didn’t want Lena missing a minute of her favorite show. Sixty-one years together, and she was the most beautiful woman Walt had ever seen. “Sit,” she said loudly. “What?” “I said sit. I’ll take him out.” They were both about as hard of hearing as one might expect of two people in their late eighties. Lena pointed animatedly to herself, then to the dog, then to Walt, then to Walt’s chair. “You sure, doll? I don’t mind.” “It’s a rerun,