A Beach Bum’s Journey to Becoming an Author by George Cramer
Until my late sixties, I never thought of writing fiction, let alone a novel.
In high school, I rarely did homework; with a few exceptions, I could score Cs on most tests. The exception was Latin. Mr. Jung inspired me to work on translations and understanding the dead language. I've forgotten it all. My English grades were not stellar in college, but I have an excuse. I was living in a beach house with three buddies from high school. Vietnam was going hot and heavy, and we were in school to postpone the draft. In two years, I never saw any of us doing homework.
The Navy snatched me up.
Two years, nine months, and two days later, I left the Navy and joined a police department. After the police, I was an investigator for three decades. I wrote formalized reports based on the facts. As the famous Sergeant Joe Friday said, "The facts, mam, nothing but the facts."
When I turned sixty-eight, I was laid off from a great job due to a corporate buyout. This is when I came to know a great deal about age discrimination. I took a writing class at my senior center to upgrade my resume. It turned out to be a fiction writing class. I fell in love with writing fictional stories.
Desiring additional skills, I joined a writers' group where my brother and sister writers shared much with me and helped improve my craft. Later I joined Sisters in Crime, where my siblings taught me even more as they welcomed me with open arms.
Needing to further improve my craft and clear my mind of crime reports, I enrolled in English classes at the local community college—becoming a straight-A student. An enrolled descendant of the Karuk Tribe of California, I took a break to earn an MFA-Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts.
As a corporate and private Investigator, I conducted thousands of investigations throughout the Americas and Asia. Before Covid, I kept my investigative skills honed by volunteering as a property and Missing Person investigator at a Bay Area Police Department.
My short stories and poems have been published in numerous anthologies. The Mona Lisa Sisters was indie published in 2020, Robbers and Cops in 2022, and New Liberty, Book 1 in the Hector Miguel Navarro detective series, was released in May of this year.
Membership in the following groups has been a force multiplier in improving my craft: Sisters in Crime, Crime Writers of Color, Mystery Writers of America, and the California Writers Club.
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George Cramer, an enrolled descendant of the Karuk Tribe of California, began his forty-year investigative career in law enforcement and then moved into private and corporate investigations.
As a corporate and private Investigator, Mr. Cramer conducted thousands of investigations throughout the Americas and Asia. He kept his investigative skills honed by volunteering as a Missing Person investigator at a California Police Department.
Contact Links:
Website: https://gdcramer.com
Blog: https://gdcramer.com/george-cramer-blog/
The post A Beach Bum’s Journey to Becoming an Author by George Cramer first appeared on Debra H. Goldstein.
The post A Beach Bum’s Journey to Becoming an Author by George Cramer appeared first on Debra H. Goldstein.
