What's in a Name?

This piece could be called A Writer's Warning or The Great Awakening. Maybe it just goes back to the old adage that the memory is the first thing to go. The realization of what had happened came yesterday when I was answering questions for an interview tied in with tomorrow's launch of my second Sid Chance novel, The Good, The Bad and The Murderous. I wanted to say something about the character Jaz LeMieux's father and needed to look it up in the first book of the series, The Surest Poison. I keep all my book files in the computer to make it easy to check back on something I wrote earlier.

But first, a little background on Jaz, or to be formal, Jasmine LeMieux. Her father, a French Canadian, came to Nashville after the Korean War and helped start what became a nationwide chain of truck stops, or travel stores, along the interstates. Her mother, an aristocratic Southern belle, disowned her when she dropped out of college and joined the Air Force, where she was assigned to the Security Police. After completing her hitch, she took to the ring and became a champion woman boxer. Since it didn't pay enough to live on, she joined the Metro Nashville Police Department to pay her bills.

On her mother's death, Jaz got back in good graces with her father, returned to school and got her MBA. She inherited controlling interest in the business on her father's death. She now serves as chairman of the board, with no responsibility for day-to-day operations. That gives her time to indulge her interest in law enforcement as Sid's associate on difficult cases.

Which brings us to the business at hand. I decided to look up information on the start of Jaques LeMieux's business by doing a search on the name I had used numerous times  in writing The Good, The Bad and The Murderous. When I entered  "Welcome Home Stores" in the Word search box and clicked on Find Next, I got a message saying the term had not been found in The Surest Poison file.

I opened the file for the new book and did the same search. Welcome Home appeared fifteen times. I went back to The Surest Poison and checked out a chapter I knew would include the business name. And there it was:

Welcome Traveler Stores.

When I did the search on that name, it came up fourteen times. Then I recalled originally using Welcome Home Stores in the first book but changing it to Welcome Traveler before sending it to the editor. That was back in 2008. I wrote the fifth Greg McKenzie mystery before starting on the second Sid Chance. I had forgotten about changing the company's name, thus used the original.

Let that be a warning. If you have a year or so delay before writing the same characters again, read the previous book before you start. It can save a lot of embarrassment. I guess I'll just sit back and wait for somebody to write and ask, "What happened to Welcome Traveler Stores?" Maybe I'll say they had a company reorganization and decided to change the name. Or maybe I'll just admit I goofed.

Chester Campbell
Visit me at Mystery Mania.

G-Whiz, the PI's Have It

I write two mystery series featuring PI's. In the first series, my protags are a couple in their latter sixties. Greg McKenzie is a sharp investigator and is fascinated by all the new surveillance gadgets, but when it comes to telephones he's a bit old-fashioned. He thinks telephones are communication devices for people to talk on, just like they were back when you stuck your finger in the correct holes to dial a number.

The G-revolution has changed all that. If you're like Greg, you've seen all the G signs around kiosks at the mall but never bothered to find out what it's all about. The modern PI knows. In my second series, Sid Chance's sidekick, Jaz LeMieux, has all the latest smart phone gadgetry and uses them to her advantage.

So what is this G business all about? Greg McKenzie stepped on the G1 rung when he bought an analog cell phone. For an investigator, it was a great time. You could buy a scanner that would sweep the cell-phone spectrum and listen in on your target's conversations. No need for a wiretap and all that business.

That ended when G2 came along, the digital cell phone. Digital transmission improved the quality of the signal but made it quite difficult to listen in on the conversations. You had to know the algorithms used by a particular cell company to unscramble a call.

Greg was okay with the G2 step, but then along came another advance known as G3. That was a bit much. Cell phones suddenly started sprouting up that would tune into the Internet, receive emails, text messages, pictures, most anything you could imagine. A bit slow for downloading large files, but doable.

Now we have the fourth generation (yes, G stands for Generation). The 4G phones are faster than ever, four to ten times faster than the previous generation. The high-speed addition will allow a PI to sit at a table watching his target chat with a potential bad guy, flip through photos on his cell phone and try to pick out a match. It provides all kinds of possibilities. Do a real-time background check.

This newest revolution won't affect Greg because he's still living in 2004, but you can bet Sid and Jaz will put it to good use. Have you encountered the G-whiz factor in a mystery?

Mystery Mania Blog

ChesterCampbell.com

Internet - Prime Source for Research

The Internet is a great source for research on a mystery novel. When I started working on The Surest Poison, the first book in my Sid Chance series, I had the basic idea for a plot contributed by a friend who’s a PI in Nashville. She’d worked a case a few years back that involved the dumping of a large amount of the toxic chemical trichloroethylene, commonly known as TCE.

My first step was to Google the chemical compound to see what it was like, how it was used, and what effects it would have on public health. I found both government and non-profit organization sites devoted to information on various pollutants, including TCE. I copied pages of details on the chemical and its health effects. I also found it was used as a degreaser in cleaning things like auto parts. All vital information for use in the novel.

I decided to locate my fictional chemical dump behind a small plant in a mostly rural county on the west side of Nashville. The other adjoining counties all had large populations and at least one moderate-sized city.

Back I went to the Internet to gather all the information available on Cheatham County. I found enough to steer me in the right direction when I made my first on-scene visit.

Since I put my protagonist, Sid Chance, in my home area of Madison, a northeastern suburb, I didn’t need the Internet or anything else to handle that area. However, I gave him a female sidekick who had inherited controlling interest in a lucrative chain of truck stops from her father, a French Canadian import.

I wanted Jasmine (Jaz) LeMieux to live in a French Colonial mansion in an affluent section on the other side of Nashville. I did a search on French Colonial houses and came up with one I used as a model. I also did a Mapquest search, both street and aerial views, to check out the Franklin Road area for a likely spot.

I also used Mapquest to look into several other areas, including the small town of Centerville, where I had them make a helicopter landing. It was also useful to figure how long it would take to drive from Jaz’s house to the location of a climactic event. And when I did the helicopter flight, I looked on the Bell Helicopter website to pick out the Jetranger III for the ride.

I set a few scenes in the fictional town of Lewisville, where Sid worked as chief of police until false accusations of bribery ended his career. I named it after explorer Meriwether Lewis, who died on the Natchez Trace near where I placed the town. I checked the Internet to be sure I had my facts correct on the Lewis and Clark Expedition’s chief.

I used the Internet in countless other ways to check out minor points. The common advice is to be careful of the facts you get off the web, as there is plenty of misinformation out there. If it was something I needed to be sure of, I always chose a reliable source, and on occasion checked another to confirm what I found.

Another use I made of the Internet was to ask questions on listserves or through emails to people like Dr. Doug Lyle, the forensic guru, or in one case, ex-policewoman Robin Burcell.

The Internet has made researching for a book as easy as sitting down at your computer. It can save hours of time and miles of travel. I recommend it highly.

Chester Campbell
www.chstercampbell.com