My Characters and I Meet up at the Shooting Range.

Shooting a gun, riding in a cop car at break-neck speeds, evaluating crime scene evidence, eating donuts, and much more will be my soup de jour at the writers’ police academy in Green Bay, Wisconsin! I’m stoked. Big time.

I’m on my way.

It’s an oxymoron of sorts: In my real life—if there’s such a thing, I’m a peace -loving, non-violent socialist who has attended more peace and justice rallies of all sorts than I can possibly count. And I’m a enthusiastic vegetarian want-to-be—who constantly fails—who rather than kill my meat, lets someone else do it for me and present it under glass at the meat market so I can guiltily purchase it, saying to myself that my wife has to have meat or she’ll get surly. On top of that, I eat it too—how many different meals can my wife make—all the while excusing myself as a backsliding vegetarian. In denial? Shit yes. I’m aware.

And, I excuse myself, also, for wanting to shoot a handgun.

When I was a kid, on every New Year’s Eve my dad let me shoot off his pheasant rifle in the air over Lake Huron–which was our front yard. He held me as I fired it because the first time I shot the rifle, at at the age of eight, the kickback put me on the ground, as well as making my shoulder black and blue—though that never dissuaded me from the next New Year’s Eve’s traditional shooting event.

But, I have never shot a pistol even though the characters in my novel have. I need the experience, I need to feel it; I rationalize.

Well hell, I repeat to myself, over and over, I’m a mystery writer. That gives me some latitude, right? I need to feel and experience what my characters feel and do, sometimes, anyway. I’m not responsible for what my characters say or do, but I need to know what they think and how they come to choosing their behaviors and heroic or miscreant paths.

Hello! I need to participate in their existence, at some level, understanding and experiencing how the good guys try to interrupt the activities of my bad guys, or visa versa.

I have already graduated from my hometown’s police academy, and now I’m privileged to attend an academy that trains not only local and state police departments but federal crime fighting agencies as well.

Wow!

Picture me jumping in the air and clicking my feet together. Or, given I’d fall and break my neck trying to do that, envision me with a big smile and thumping heart.

The end product of this adventure, I’m a more informed mystery writer…And one happy dude-ette!

(To read more about how a cloud can hang over a person and refuse to leave, scroll down to: “What’s Next?”)