Thursday, May 31, 2018

Interview with mystery writer J.R. Ferguson


Today is the seventh interview in a series with the authors of

Tick Tock: A Stitch in Crime
An Insecure Writer’s Support Group Anthology




About the anthology:
The clock is ticking...

Can a dead child’s cross-stitch pendant find a missing nun? Is revenge possible in just 48 minutes? Can a killer be stopped before the rescuers are engulfed by a city ablaze? Who killed what the tide brought in? Can a soliloquizing gumshoe stay out of jail?

Exploring the facets of time, eleven authors delve into mysteries and crimes that linger in both dark corners and plain sight. Featuring the talents of Gwen Gardner, Rebecca M. Douglass, Tara Tyler, S. R. Betler, C.D. Gallant-King, Jemi Fraser, J. R. Ferguson, Yolanda Renée, C. Lee McKenzie, Christine Clemetson, and Mary Aalgaard.

Hand-picked by a panel of agents and authors, these eleven tales will take you on a thrilling ride into jeopardy and secrecy. Trail along, find the clues, and stay out of danger. Time is wasting...

“Each story is fast paced, grabbing the reader from the beginning.”
- Readers' Favorite, 5 stars

Founded by author Alex J. Cavanaugh, the Insecure Writer’s Support Group offers support for writers and authors alike. It provides an online database, articles and tips, a monthly blog posting, a Facebook and Instagram group, Twitter, and a monthly newsletter. www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com

So far, we’ve had C.D. Gallant-King (on April 19), Gwen Gardner (on April 26), Jemi Fraser (on May 2), Christine Clemetson (on May 11), Rebecca M. Douglass (on May 15), Yolanda Renee (May 23), and now J.R. Ferguson is here to chat about her mystery short story called “The Little Girl in the Bayou.” 

Bio:
Jessica Ferguson is a staff writer for Southern Writers Magazine and the author of several novels and novellas—both published and unpublished. She fantasizes that one day she’ll wake up and all those manuscripts on her hard drive will be, miraculously, revised and edited. In her spare time, Jess enjoys Bible Studies, bean bag baseball, breakfast/brainstorming with friends and playing with her recently retired husband.

Welcome, J.R. What do you enjoy most about writing short stories?
Short stories are fun but challenging for me. I like when a story idea presents itself to me with a beginning, middle and ending. That doesn’t happen often but when it does, writing the short story is a real treat.

Can you give us a little insight into a few of your short stories – perhaps some of your favorites?
I wouldn’t call myself a real short story writer, but the few I’ve written are from a male point of view—usually a good man caught in a sticky situation. Mack in my short story The Little Girl in the Bayou is my favorite main character. I’ve used him in a couple other stories and feel like I know him well.

What genre are you inspired to write in the most? Why?
My favorite genres are mystery and romance. If you told me I had to write a science fiction short story, I’d panic. I know nothing about that genre.

What exciting story are you working on next?
I’m in the process of editing a full-length novel. After that, I have four novellas in need of revision. I do have a short story that’s looking for a home. It’s one that popped into my head as I was driving the backwoods of East Texas. It hit me beginning, middle and end—pretty exciting—so I’m anxious to see it in print.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I have always considered myself a writer though when I was young, I wrote ad jingles and poetry. I recently connected with an old classmate who said she remembers me walking around school with my notebook of poems. I don’t remember that; sure wish I could find that notebook!

How do you research markets for your work, perhaps as some advice for writers?
Researching markets is one of my favorite things to do. I belong to many online groups and always have my eyes and ears open for call-outs and where other writers are getting published.

Reading writer bios is helpful too. They usually list where the writer is published. I believe networking is one of the most important things a writer can do—published or unpublished.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I’ve never thought about having a writing quirk but maybe it’s that I like to write in huge chunks of time, not thirty minutes here and thirty minutes there. Also, I can write with noise all around me—a library or mall food court, but put me in my home office with hubby in the house and I struggle. Isn’t that a little quirky?

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be everything! A few things that popped out of my mouth when asked that question was: teacher, foreign correspondent—Ernie Pyle style, movie star, detective, rock and roll singer, English professor … I was a naïve kid that didn’t have a clue. Maybe that’s why I chose writing—I can live through my characters and be any of those things.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Yeah, friend me on Facebook! I love collecting friends in real life and online.

Thanks for being here today, J.R.! Happy writing.


Tick Tock links:

Purchase links:

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Interview with novelist H. Laurence Lareau


Author H. Laurence Lareau joins me today and we’re chatting about his new contemporary workplace romance, Love. Local. Latebreaking.

During his virtual book tour, Laurence will be awarding a $15 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky, randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit his other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:
H. Laurence Lareau fell in love with romances the first time Pride and Prejudice came home from the library with him. Since that high school summer, he has earned an English degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, worked as a television and print journalist, built a career in law, and has remained a Jane Austen junkie through it all.

The Newsroom Romance series draws from his careers, his voracious reading, and his curiosity about the tensions between real life and real love.

Real life now is dramatically different from the real life of Austen’s times—privileged women no longer choose between eligible members of the landed gentry, nor are they imperiled by the sexist mysteries of the entailed fee simple estate in land.

Modern women with the privileges of education rather than birth now embark upon careers that can satisfy many personal and material dreams. Seemingly inevitably, though, careers fall short of the promise that they’ll fulfill women as people.

Strong, modern women have defined Lareau’s professional and personal lives, and strong women fully occupy center stage in their own newsroom romance stories. Their high-profile journalism and legal careers matter deeply to them and to the people they serve.

Then love comes walking in. These book boyfriends don’t have kilts or billions or pirate ships, though. Their career goals meet and often clash with their romantic counterparts, requiring both the men and women to make hard choices about what happily ever after should look like and how to achieve it.

When he isn’t writing, practicing law, or raising children, he’s working on martial arts and music.

Welcome, Laurence. Please share a little bit about your current release.
In Love. Local. Latebreaking., Karli Lewis follows her TV-news reporter’s ambition to Des Moines, Iowa—a place she views as a quick stop on her way to a major market like Chicago. According to plan, the skilled photographers she works with bring her great reporting to vivid life on the airwaves. Jake Gibson’s inspired images help her stories get the attention of prestigious newsrooms. But he’s gotten her attention, in a frustratingly inconvenient—and sexy—way. Staying with him means staying in Des Moines; moving on to fulfill her career means moving on from a connection she’s found with Jake and no other man, ever. Can Karli find a way to keep her career together and keep their love together?

What inspired you to write this book?
Professionals are often conflicted between their work lives and their love lives. Building a whole life—one where professional fulfillment and personal fulfillment are both attainable—is a monumental challenge. The obstacles can be overwhelming, and one or the other is usually sacrificed in some degree.

The story of the modern romantic quest to reconcile those two competing needs is too seldom explored. Real life doesn’t involve pirates or billionaires or kilted Scotsmen who spur in to the life-threatening rescue, and though those stories can be amazing fun, they can also be untruthful to what genuine romantic experiences—and the obstacles to achieving them—have for people who must deal with the reality of contemporary life.

Karli and Jake work in a very public, incredibly stressful profession. Portraying them with fidelity to the truth of those stresses and the hope for overcoming them seemed an important riddle to present and solve.

Not that there’s anything new about this conundrum. Jane Austen dealt with the same questions, just in a different time and place. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennett struggled enormously to find economic security at the same time that she sought a genuinely connected and loving relationship. Throughout the book, she watched other men and women try their hands at that dual quest and fail tragically. Her happily-ever-after with Darcy—accomplishing everything she worked for—is one of the greatest resolutions to any romance novel ever.

There are, of course, many other aspects to a modern happily-ever-after. The expectations men and women bring to modern relationships—personal (even sacramental) fulfillment, great sex, best-friendship, sports partnership, domestic burden-sharing, and all the rest—bring sometimes overwhelming pressures with them. L.L.L. explores only some of those, however, focusing on those that precede the happily-ever-after.

No book is worth reading just because it solves problems, though. L.L.L. takes the reader on a ride through any number of exciting headline news stories—from guns-drawn drug busts to fatal accidents to house fires to natural disasters—each more riveting than the last. Plus there are the characters’ own tragic losses, drunken hilarity, passionate and deeply connected lovemaking, despairing heartbreak, and triumphant climax.


Excerpt from Love. Local. Latebreaking.:
(Karli’s newsroom gal-pals, Production Assistant Mary Rose Meyer and Anchor Bailey Barber, are genuine ride-or-die friends. When Karli had a rough day—another reporter talked the news director into giving her a series that Karli had done most of the preliminary reporting work on—they met for drinks at downtown Des Moines’ Hotel Savery):

Karli drained her glass with a thoughtful expression and considered Bailey’s assessment. When she spoke, her words’ edges were softened by the liquor. “There’s a lot to what you say, Bailey. But it’s still complete bullshit that Sophia has this series and I don’t, and I want to be pissed about that right now.”
“Yes!” Mary Rose cried, raising her beer glass. “Let’s hate Sophia!” She brought the beer to her lips and drank deeply. “She’s a snooty bitch anyway, regardless of this series thing,” she whispered to Bailey and Karli.
“That’s not terribly constructive, you know,” Bailey chided. “So what’s up with Jake and the kissing?” she said, shifting the subject abruptly. “Any news about that?”
“He hasn’t even been to work in forever,” Karli slurred. “How’m I supposed to kiss him if he’s never around?”
Mary Rose, who had not heard about Jake and the kissing, goggled at her friends, her open-mouth and bugged eyes flicking from one to the other, looking for answers to obvious questions. “Jake and the Kissing? That sounds like a great band, but it also sounds like something I need desperately to hear about. When did you and Jake start in with the kissing? He has never even hinted that you guys were getting wild and nasty! And besides, Sophia wants him even more than she wants your series. I’m surprised she didn’t slink that exotic figure into the kissing a long time ago!”
“Mary Rose, no. Just no. We never kissed at all,” Karli said, defensiveness in every syllable. “And besides, he’s a complete asshole.”
“Then what’s with the new band?” Mary Rose’s face was covered with suspicion, as was the tone of her voice.
“It was just a thing,” Karli sighed. “We watched a movie together, and then there was this moment when it seemed like we were going to kiss, but then it all went bust. So no kissing.”
Bailey saw that Karli needed rescuing, so she chimed in with, “So what happened when he came back for the drug bust story? He didn’t even stick around to edit that package, did he?”
Mary Rose cut in ahead of Karli’s response: “No way Jose—or Josephine, I guess, since you’re a chick—he split and then I cut it together, and I did an awesome job, too, I might add.”
“And you’re fun to work with, Mary Rose” Karli added. “But why again won’t they assign you to field shooting—because of some departmental accounting thing?”
“Yeah, Mary Rose’s great,” Bailey seconded enthusiastically. “But what scared him away that day?” Bailey asked. “Everyone has been wondering, but Vince just says to shut up and tend to our own knitting.”
“I don’t know,” Karli very nearly whined. “We had a scary morning, yet things seemed kind of normal when we headed out. Then he got all emo in the truck. He talked about not needing the job and not being able to keep people safe or make good decisions or something. He was all pissed about giving me his Kevlar vest, too, like it was some cop’s fault, and I couldn’t understand what the problem was there, either. I was trying to thank him for giving it to me, but it all blew up and went weird. It was like having a conversation with a mentally ill person.”
“This is AWESOME!” Mary Rose boomed. She raised her beer and solemnly intoned,
“Here’s to hating Sophia and to bullying Jake for being demented!” She chugged the beer, heedless of the scandalized looks on Karli and Bailey’s faces.


What exciting story are you working on next?
The second book in the Newsroom Romance series, Traffick Report, is already out. (Each book stands alone, so it isn’t necessary to read them in order.) Where Love. Local. Latebreaking. is nicely steamy, Traffick Report frankly explores places along the sexual-encounter spectrum, from meh to really nice to soulful and life-altering. Bailey and Mary Rose are both front and center, each trying to find their own happily ever after. Bailey’s quest takes her into a sizzling series of encounters that reveal how utterly different great sex is from sex that is not deeply connected and mutually self-giving. Mary Rose, on the other hand, knows what she wants (no kink to speak of), and engaging her boyfriend in getting it results in a major awakening for him.

Much of the story surrounds a young sex-trafficking victim and how the criminal justice system tries to re-victimize her. Bailey and her man come together and then clash over his defense of the girl’s court case and her reporting.

The third book, Storm Sirens, is in process. We’ll meet the meteorologists in this one. In addition to actual storms, we’ll encounter the storm of controversy surrounding the opioid-addiction crisis that is becoming ever more horrifying.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
My entire adult life has been in writing. From stultifying, mind-numbingly dull work such as my law review article, Rights of Surface Owners on Federally Patented Lands, 10 U.Ky.J.Nat.Resources & Envtl.L. 13 (1995), to a martial arts story on Tai Chi’s Energy Borrowing in Kung Fu-Tai Chi Magazine, to comedic educational video scripts to straight-up journalism and countless other endeavors, writing and public speaking have been at the center of all my work efforts.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
Yes and no. My day job is as a litigator. Although I try to bring some life and color to my legal writing, it isn’t nearly as satisfying as working with the characters in my novels. The only way I can comprehend having found time to write two novels and have a third in progress is to believe that there is some kind of recurring distortion of space-time that gives me intermittent bonus hours.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
Most authors’ characters become pretty real to the writer. When my characters find their way to an intimate encounter—which is always important to them and to the reader—it feels voyeuristic to write the details of their interactions, and I usually wind up furiously blushing while I try to get through the scene as quickly as I can.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A professor of French literature. Preferably one who lived in France, ate lots of baguette, and bicycled to campus every day.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Like every author, I hope readers enjoy my books. But if they don’t, or if they’re not super-enthused about certain things, I would love to hear about from them. Writing books is hard work, and I want to do everything I can to make sure readers find something relatable and truthful in them.

If you’re looking for the books, they’re available in paperback and as e-books. Love. Local. Latebreaking. is also available as an audiobook. The narrator and I dated for a summer in college. She went on to a fairly glamorous theater career and is now an English teacher.

Here’s to your own happily ever after!

Links:

Thank you for being a guest on my blog!

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Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Interview with author Larry Higdon


My special guest today is Larry Higdon. We’re chatting about this psychological drama, The Storms of Deliverance.

Bio:
Born in 1947 in Atlanta. Served in Vietnam as an English language instructor. I’ve traveled abroad to Canada, Mexico, and Australia. Following my enlistment in the Air Force in 1974, I returned to Atlanta, and I’ve lived here ever since. I practiced law for the Department of Veterans Affairs for approximately ten years. Subsequently, I worked as an elementary school counselor for approximately ten years. I’ve been a writer since retiring from the public schools. The Storms of Deliverance is my first novel. I’ve never married. I lost my last parent when my mother died in December 2013. I inherited her cat, who was the joy of my existence. Unfortunately, however, Missy died in August 2014 of kidney disease. I hope to get another cat someday.

Welcome, Larry. Please tell us about your current release.
An alcoholic whom people call “Bad News” Johnson due to his violent temper wastes his life after his incipient baseball career ends with a diagnosis of arthritis in his pitching arm. Following a tragic automobile accident, Johnson believes that he has leapt forward 27 years. But is it time travel or amnesia? Has he traveled forward 27 years or lost 27 years of past memories? Either way he doesn’t like the man he’s become. He doesn’t like “Bad News” Johnson. He sets out to try to win back his ex-wife and daughter.

What inspired you to write this book?
Most of my life I had a variety of scenes in my head that didn’t seem to fit together. Then one day they did. Everything came together, and I realized that I could write this book. Once I embarked on it, the book practically wrote itself. I felt as though I were taking dictation.


Excerpt from The Storms of Deliverance:
            Suddenly Ellen looked back at the smashed vehicle. “Where’s Rags? Where’s Taffy?”
            His words wheezed out of him. “They’re in the car. I’ll get them. Don’t worry.”
            “No!” she wailed. She ran down to the car, waving her arms. “Rags! Taffy!”
            “No!” screamed Johnson. “Ellen! Stop!”
            He wobbled to his feet and attempted to run after her, but stumbled immediately, his legs crumbling.
            Ellen scrambled through the front window. The backseat burst into flames.
            “Ellen!” Johnson screamed again.
            No voice, human or animal, emanated from the Volkswagen. The only sound was that of the deathly lapping flames, yellow tinged with red, sharply pointed wicked fingers reaching out of the windshield and the small opening in the driver’s side window. Johnson stood up again, and fell down again. “Ellen! No! My God, no!”
            The engine exploded. What had before been a motor vehicle containing a little girl, a kitten, and a shaggy dog, was now but a huge, roaring ball of fire, like a portion of a fiery meteorite that had slammed into earth.


What exciting story are you working on next?
Katy Nguyen, Johnson’s ex-wife from my first novel, narrates The School from Hell. An elementary school counselor, Katy is assigned to Horseshoe Farms Elementary School, a high poverty school in the north Georgia mountains. Overhead pipes leak, forming pools of water in the hallways, windows are busted out, the heating and air conditioning don’t work, and the school is infested with rats. Moreover, Katy has demons of her own. She suffers from Bipolar II and her daughter Zoe is addicted to crystal meth. On more than one occasion Katy is tempted to take her own life. Her involvement with a first-grade girl, however, leads her to a new perspective. Although not exactly a sequel, most of the major characters in my first novel appear in this one. It should be released within the next couple of months.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
When my first novel was published.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I write in the mornings. I go to Starbuck’s or a fast food restaurant, get some coffee, and open up my MacBook. Sometimes I also write at my dining room table at home. When not writing I’m reading. I consider reading to be Continuing Education.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
Writing in noisy restaurants.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A baseball player.

Links:

Monday, May 28, 2018

Interview with mystery author R.G. Belsky


Author R.G. Belsky joins me today and we’re talking about his new mystery, Yesterday’s News.

Bio:
R.G. Belsky is an author of crime fiction and a journalist in New York City. His newest mystery, Yesterday's News, was published in May 2018 by Oceanview. It is the first in a series featuring Clare Carlson, the news director for a New York City TV station. He previously wrote the Gil Malloy series for Atria about a tabloid newspaper reporter. Belsky himself has been a top editor at the New York Post (where he helped create the famous “Headless Body in Topless Bar” headline), the New York Daily News, Star magazine and NBC News. Two earlier Belsky thrillers that came out in the ‘90s – Loverboy and Playing Dead – were re-released by Harper Collins recently in ebook form for the first time.

Please tell us about your current release.
Yesterday's News is about a legendary missing child cold case - and a journalist obsessed with finding out the answers to it. Fifteen years ago, 11-year-old Lucy Devlin disappeared on her way to school in New York City - and no one ever found out what happened to her.

Clare Carlson, a young newspaper reporter at the time, became a media star by writing front page stories about the search for little Lucy - even winning a Pulitzer Prize for her extraordinary coverage of the case. Today Clare is a TV news executive at Channel 10 in New York. But now, on the 15th anniversary of Lucy's disappearance, the case explodes into the headlines all over again.

Clare has to plunge back into the sensational story all over again, a story she thought she had put long behind her in her past. Suddenly there is new evidence, new victims and new suspects. Everyone from members of a New York motorcycle gang to a prominent politician running for a U.S. Senate seat seem to have secrets they're hiding about what might have happened to Lucy Devlin.

But Clare has her own secrets too. And, in order to untangle the truth about Lucy Devlin, she must finally confront her own tortuous past.

What inspired you to write this book?
Missing persons cases – especially missing children – are perhaps even more tragic than murders. Writer Edna Buchanan once wrote: “One misfortune is worse than murder. It is to lose someone you love, without ever knowing that person’s fate.” As a young journalist in New York City, I loved the most famous missing child case ever – the disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz on his way to school. For years afterward, there were false hopes and false leads that he might still be alive. But then a man was finally convicted of his murder, which at least gave the family some closure. I decided to write a story about a different kind of missing child case – in which there was no closure and no answers about what really happened. The result was Yesterday’s News.


Excerpt from Yesterday’s News:
OPENING CREDITS
THE RULES ACCORDING TO CLARE
           
I always tell the same story to the new reporters on their first day.
It goes like this: Two guys are sitting in a bar bragging about their sexual exploits. As they get drunker and drunker, the conversation becomes more outrageous about how far they’d be willing to go. Would you ever have sex with an animal, one of them asks? Of course not, the other guy replies angrily. What if someone paid you $50 to do it with a dog? That’s ridiculous, he says. How about $500? Same answer. Okay, the first guy says to him, would you have sex with a dog for $5,000? The other guy thinks about that for a while, then asks: “What breed?”
The point here is that once you ask the question “what breed?” you’ve already crossed over a very important line and can never go back.
It’s based, I suppose, on the famous old Winston Churchill story. They say Churchill was seated at a dinner party next to a very elegant and beautiful lady. During the meal, he turned to her and asked if she’d be willing to have sex with him if he gave her $1,000,000. The woman laughed and said sure. Then he asked if she’d have sex with him for $25. “Of course not, what do you think I am?” the indignant woman replied. To which Churchill told her, “Madame, we’ve already established what you are. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”
This is a crucial concept in the news business where I work. Because there is no gray area for a journalist when it comes to honesty and integrity and moral standards. You can’t be just a little bit immoral or a little bit dishonest or a little bit corrupt. There is no compromise possible here.
Sometimes I tell a variation of the dog story.
I call it the Woodstein Maneuver.
The idea is to come up with a new scenario for the Watergate scandal. To speculate on what might have happened if Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (“Woodstein!” in the Robert Redford–Dustin Hoffman movie) had not written their stories that led to Richard Nixon’s ouster, but instead gotten hush money to cover up the scandal. What if Nixon had paid them to make it all go away?
I ask a new reporter to put themselves in Woodward and Bernstein’s place and think about what they would do if offered such a bribe.
Most of them immediately say they would never take money under any circumstances to compromise a story. I’m not sure if they say it because they really mean it or simply because they believe it’s the answer I want to hear. A few laughingly say they’d go for the money, but I’m not sure I believe them either. I figure they’re just trying to be outrageous or different.
Only a few reporters ask the key question.
The “what breed?” question.
“How much money?” they want to know.
Those are the ones I worry about the most.


What exciting story are you working on next?
The second Clare Carlson mystery, The Cinderella Murders, which will be out in the spring of 2019. It's about the seemingly insignificant murder of a homeless woman who calls herself Cinderella - which leads Clare into a tangled web of long-buried secrets and murder involving some of the most powerful and prominent people in New York.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Always. I've been a working journalist all my life. I was metropolitan editor of the New York Post; managing editor of the New York Daily News; news editor at Star magazine; and a managing editor at NBC News. I started writing fiction many years ago (after I discovered Philip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler's, The Big Sleep). Yesterday's News is the 11th mystery novel I've had published.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
Most of my books were written while I was still working full time as an editor in newsrooms. I would simply get up an hour or two early every day to write before going to work - that was my writing routine. People used to ask how I could work long hours as a journalist in the office and still want to write besides that. My answer was simple: As an editor, the most important thing I had to do was make sure a story was accurate. To check and re-check the facts. That could be very stressful and time consuming. When I write mystery novels, I get to make everything up. Now that's fun!

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I write all my mystery novels out long-hand. Not on a computer (or typewriter before that.). When I wrote stories in a newsroom, of course, I always used the computer. But I just feel more comfortable and creative doing fiction long-hand - before putting it into the computer. I once read that Ernest Hemingway wrote a lot of his books in long-hand too (using a typewriter only for the dialogue). It worked out pretty well for him!

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A newspaper reporter. Never any doubt. Never considered anything else. I don't know why, but that was the goal since I was a young child. Maybe watching a lot of Clark Kent/Superman shows or something. But - unlike a lot of my friends as we went through high school and then college - I was completely certain the whole time what I wanted to do with my life.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Well, I’ve been a journalist for many years and covered a lot of big stories – Son of Sam, O.J., political scandals and much more. But the thing I’m probably most know for is my involvement with the most famous tabloid headline of all time: HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR. I didn’t even write that headline. But I was the city editor when the story broke (about a holdup man who killed someone in a topless bar, then cut off the head and took it with him.) So I had to confirm all the facts, including that it was indeed a topless bar. There have many articles written about this in the years since, including my role in the creation of that headline. Hey, its good to be famous for something!

Links: