Happy Birthday, Dad! I've written you into my novels.

My dad and brother Joel in the '50s

Today is my dad's birthday, so he's been on my mind. I decided to write something about him and what have turned out to be ... in a way ... his books.

I've written three adult mystery novels, one is available this moment, another will publish next week. A third is written and in the edit process.

All three novels are set in a fictional version of my old hometown, Nenana, Alaska. The challenge writing mysteries, is not the figuring the mystery so much as finding the right character to solve the mystery. It needs to be someone original, someone whose fictional voice you know well enough to speak in.

So I'm sitting around trying to imagine who that character might be, and in walks the memory of my dad.

The character as a box we color in. 

Readers frequently want to know if my dad did all that stuff in the books. 

He didn't. The books are fiction. The town is darn near fiction. It's my version of Nenana in the 1950s, a time I was in elementary school. Do I even remember what I think I do? Probably not, but it doesn't matter: it works in the stories. 

And dad is a box, or a shell, that I fill with ideas and adventures. The advantage for me as a writer is I know how he sounds in my head. A lot of times I know what he might say, and how he'd sound saying it. I know what he wore, what he drove ... how he spent his days ... and I invest all that knowing in my books. 

An invitation to time travel

The first book is called "Indecent Exposure." It's based on the notion that if you're indecently exposed in Nenana in winter, you'll freeze! The first book has spies, snipers, pornographers, mystery, intrigue action, all built around trying live in a lonely place with a broken heart. 

If that sounds good to you, check it out here: Indecent Exposure

If you've already ready IE, check out the new one: "In Gold We Trust," out next week.