NEW SHORT STORY ANTHOLOGY EBOOKS

While I’m working at finding a literary agent to handle my books, I’ve decided to test the self-publishing waters with some collections of stories. If you’ve wanted to read some of my science fiction, here’s your chance. There are two anthologies of three short stories each.

The first is Body Of Opinion and other stories which features some rather dark stories with a kind of noir feel to them. It totals about 10,000 words. It’s available from Kobo and Amazon as well as other online sellers for $2.99 CDN (may be less in USD).

            No Walls: When a man discovers that he has the ability to pass through walls, he thinks it’s more of a curse than a gift, only useful for petty crime. Until a secret intelligence organization gets its hooks into him. Then his real troubles begin. (First published in “Neo-opsis” Issue #18, 2009).

            Lockdown: In a future society, criminals on parole don’t even dare to think about committing a crime or their bodies could go into complete lockdown. So how does a guy get revenge on those who’ve wronged him?

            Body of Opinion: For a dying man, a replacement body is a godsend. Unless the body turns out to be a used model with some serious glitches, and the only solution is to discover what happened to its first owner.

The second is Disastrous!: Three Stories of the End of the World which pretty much tells you what it’s about. The total length is about 16,000 words. You can find it at Kobo and Amazon and elsewhere. Also $2.99 CDN (may be less in USD).

            Tartarus Rising: The most critical business centres of the world are suddenly swallowed into the ground, a chemical explosion devastates New Jersey, and survivors flee the rumours of invaders from beneath the Earth. (First published in the anthology "Doomology" from Library of Science Fiction & Fantasy Press, 2010).

            Saviour: A killer asteroid is headed for the Earth and the defence against it depends on one man. But what if he’s the wrong choice?

            The Cleansing: The people of a far-future pastoral Earth discover that their forbears genetically modified their crops to be protected from mutations by occasional die-offs. Except no-one has a plan when all of the crops start to die at the same time.

No Walls and Saviour have previously been available on my web page, but they fit the themes of the anthologies.

I had a lot of fun writing all of the stories and I hope you’ll enjoy reading them.

"COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!"

If you’re a reader of crime fiction or a fan of crime shows on TV you’ve probably wondered how much of the police procedure you see depicted is accurate. In books? It’s probably not bad. On TV? Maybe not so much.

Sooner or later most writers, even if they’re in science fiction, will probably feature a crime scenario and the ensuing police investigation, and I think writers have an obligation to try to get the details right. Fortunately there are now lots of resources to help, including websites and books especially produced for writers. But details can vary a lot from place to place, so why not get it straight from the horse’s mouth (a police horse, of course)? You might be surprised to find that your local police service is very willing to help you get your facts straight. Here are some of the things I’ve learned about policing in a medium-sized city in Ontario, Canada.

-         police services in Ontario are networked and use PowerCase software to collect case information. One of the benefits is that similarities to a case in another jurisdiction can be readily found and flagged.

-         Any major case passed to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) is handled by a Major Case Management Team (MCMT) which uses the Major Case Management Triangle, consisting of a Team Commander, a Primary Investigator, and a File Coordinator. The titles sometimes change, and the triangle can be only two people instead of three, but the three roles must be covered.

-         In my city, investigators routinely handle 20 cases at a time. In some jurisdictions it can be twice that many!

-         Some police services have Scenes Of Crime Officers known as SOCO’s who take all the photographs and collect all of the physical evidence at a crime scene. In other places, it is an officer of the Forensics Identification Unit who does this. In every instance they’re very strict about who gets access to a crime scene. A local FIU might process fingerprints on their own, but chemical or other physical evidence is sent to a specialized lab. In Ontario it would be either the Centre for Forensic Science in Toronto or the Northern Regional Forensic Laboratory in Sault Ste. Marie. Your area will have similar places.

Just from this sampling, it’s easy to see how a writer could go wrong and damage the credibility of their story.

So don’t “surrender” to your lack of knowledge. Get the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.