Terry Odell's Blog, page 65

Men Are Not Women With Chest Hair

Men Are Not Women With Chest Hair

I’m over at The Kill Zone Blog today. My MurderCon recaps will continue on Friday.

As a writer of romantic suspense, one genre expectation is that stories are told from both the hero and heroine’s points of view. Writing characters outside one’s genre—and this isn’t restricted to the romance genre, or to major characters—is a challenge. As the title of this blog points out, men aren’t women with chest hair. There are some hard-wired differences, and understandi...

MurderCon Recap 4

MurderCon Recap 4

I’m continuing my recaps of the Virtual MurderCon Conference. The next session was called Murder and Mayhem, presented by David Pauly. This one will really be bullet points, because he hit us with a lot of information. As always, any errors are mine.

There are about 800,000 officers law enforcement in the US.

17,000 agencies – sanctioned with law enforcement
90 agencies train at FLETC
Average agency size under 50 sworn officers.
Majority of officers have NO forensic science...

MurderCon Recap 3

MurderCon Recap 3

I’m continuing my workshop recaps of the Virtual MurderCon conference. The next session I attended was on blood, presented by David Alford

Here are the bullet point notes I took. As always, any errors are mine.

Testing for Blood

If it’s obvious, don’t need to test.
If you don’t know, then you test.

Blood is important to:

link victim to crime scene
link suspect to crime scene
link suspect to victim
4 eliminate individual as a suspect

Blood is a biohazard, so you should use ...

MurderCon Recap 2

MurderCon Recap 2

The next session at MurderCon was on fingerprinting. Again, I tried to get everything down as accurately as I could, but any errors are mine.

Our speaker, Jim Gocke, began by explaining the role of forensic scientists. Their role is to bring “reliable validity to assist whether an element or fact of an element is present.” They’re not concerned with the why.

What they want to know:

Is it Identifiable?
Is it Extractable?
Does it have Probative value? (Will it stand up in court....

MurderCon Recap 1

MurderCon Recap 1

As I mentioned Friday, I attended MurderCon, the Writers’ Police Academy conference which was done via Zoom.

The instructors were generous enough to permit sharing information, but as with all my recaps, the accuracy of the information provided is dependent on my interpretation of what they said, and my ability to take notes and listen at the same time.

The first workshop was primarily a Q&A session with a homicide detective (who referred to himself as a “Murder Cop”), Jeff Loc...

Virtual Conferences

Virtual Conferences

I’ve been participating in a virtual meeting, MurderCon, which went on line due to  the pandemic restrictions. I know people have been Zooming (is that an acceptable verb?) regularly, but I’m a newbie. Other than a couple of family get-togethers and my book club meetings, I haven’t done many of virtual meetings, much less large ones.

This conference used Zoom, but I think my observations would carry over to other virtual meeting platforms as well.

There were about 200 people ...

Edits, Light, and Color

My editor returned her line edits for Heather’s Chase, which means I’m going to have to concentrate on getting the final touches done. After dealing with her feedback, it will be time for “Fred” to read the manuscript to me. Then, I’ll have to address front and back matter, formatting, and making sure the book is as good as I can get it before release. It’s available for pre-order (I’ll bet I’ve mentioned that before a time or two!), with a scheduled release day of September 15th. Depending on h...

Pandemic Brain Strikes Again

Pandemic Brain Strikes Again

Way back—like in 2012—I took an all-day workshop presented by the Mystery Writers of America. One of the speakers was Reed Farrel Coleman, who shared his technique when starting a new book. He writes his pages. The next morning, he starts on page 1, edits those pages, and then continues. On day 3, he again starts at page 1, edits, and then continues. He does this until he has 50 pages of manuscript. By then, he’s internalized the story, and each day gives him a runni...

When Do You Fix Things?

When Do You Fix Things?

With Heather’s Chase in the hands of my editor for line edits, I figured I’d have several weeks before she returns it. That’s too long to sit idle, and long enough for me to get back to work on the Mapleton novel I started. I’d set it aside when I was dealing with developmental edits for Heather’s Chase.

I’d written about 7500 words before I stopped, and in my efforts to be accurate, I’d reached out to three sources with actual experience and expertise in their fields. Af...

Preorder Heather’s Chase

Preorder Heather’s Chase

 

here.

Heather’s Chase is set on a tour of the British Isles, with stops at a lot of the places I visited on my tour last fall. While you wait for release day, I thought you might like to see some of the pictures I took, many of which are mentioned in the book. You can find links to them on the book page by scrolling down to “Special Features.”

(Be sure to stop at the buy links to preorder your copy!)

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