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.

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

A quick look at The Surest Poison

Since this is mystery excerpt week, I'll share a snippet of my latest book, The Surest Poison, first in my new Sid Chance series from Night Shadows Press. The following excerpt introduces the two main characters.

It was still dark when Sid Chance pulled off I-40 at the Old Hickory Boulevard exit. He turned his vintage brown pickup toward Madison, a rambling middle-class suburb on the northeast side of Nashville. A big man, every bit of six-six, he had a headful of black hair and a short beard to match, both laced with threads of silver. The last time he had glanced in a mirror, the glower he saw made him think of a troll. He recalled an old admirer saying he looked like a Hollywood hero when he smiled. He wasn’t so sure. He hadn’t done all that much smiling in recent times.

Though most of the area’s workers remained asleep or just getting started on breakfast, traffic moved at a moderate pace on the circumferential highway. After crossing the Cumberland River, Sid took the cutoff north to Gallatin Pike, Madison’s Main Street. His office, a grudging requirement of his new life, occupied a corner in a glass and stone building near RiverGate Mall, anchor for the community’s primary shopping area. One strip center after another lined both sides of the street, deserted mini-cities at this time of day.

He glanced at his muddy boots and smudged jeans as he ambled toward the front of the building. He needed a shower and clean clothes, but that could wait. He figured his chances of encountering someone now little better than those of holding a winning lottery ticket. Nobody was fool enough to come in at this time of day except a habitual early riser, something he’d been since service with Army Special Forces in Vietnam. That’s where he learned to exist on a minimal amount of sleep. Inside, he turned toward his office and glanced at the “Sidney Chance Investigations” sign on the door. It brought one of his infrequent grins. How cool would it have been if they had named him Random instead of Sidney.

The answering machine chirped its practiced greeting as he walked in. Welcome back to what most people would call the real world, he thought. Maybe a few more months of civilization would rekindle his appreciation for the marvels of modern technology. Right now they seemed more an annoyance. A computer glitch that had gobbled up three days of painstaking work was the kicker that sent him back to the cabin for a cooling off period.

He found six messages on the machine. Two from Jaz LeMieux wanting him to return her calls, two from guys he didn’t know and doubted he wanted to, one from a process server, and one from a lawyer seeking his help. He played that one again.
“This is Arnie Bailey, with the law firm of Bailey, Riddle and Smith. Jasmine LeMieux highly recommended you for a job I need done. She said you were good at finding missing persons. This is a little different, however. It’s a missing company. My client faces a major financial disaster if we can’t find the organization involved. It’s a chemical pollution case around Ashland City. I’d appreciate your calling me as soon as you can.”

He glanced at his watch. It was way too early to call a lawyer, even somebody who sounded as anxious as this one. He decided to go home and shower, eat breakfast, then come back and have another go at it. No doubt the calls from Jaz related to Bailey’s problem.

Sid lived in the ranch-style brick house his mother had called home for twenty-five years. She died around the time his career as a small town police chief crashed and burned. The house stood near the river at the end of a quiet street in a neighborhood of mostly young couples and a few retirees. The sky had begun to brighten by the time he pulled into his driveway, though dirty gray clouds seemed to hang within arm’s reach.

He reveled in the soothing spray of the shower. It drummed against his back like a masseur’s fingers, easing some of the troubled thoughts that had knotted up his mind on the drive back from his hillside retreat. Despite a lot of jury-rigging, he had never come up with a reliable way to get a hot shower in the backwoods. He dressed and settled into the compact kitchen for breakfast. As he poured milk onto his cereal, the phone rang.

“Glad you finally decided to answer.” Jaz LeMieux’s voice had an edge.

“I just got home a little while ago.”

“From where?”

“The cabin.”

“Don’t you answer your cell phone?”

“When it’s turned on.”

There was a pause. “I think you’re reverting to your mountain man persona, Sid.”

He said nothing.

“Have all my efforts been wasted?”

“I did a lot of pondering last night,” he said. “But I came back.”

At first he had credited his financial mentor, Mike Rich, with the responsibility for luring him out of self-imposed exile. Lately he had begun to lean toward Jaz.

“Have you talked to Arnie Bailey?” she asked.

“I went by the office around 5:30 and got his message off the answering machine. What’s the story?”

“You’ll have to get the details from Arnie.”

“He a friend?”

“He’s a good guy. He’s done legal work for us.”

At forty-five, she served as chairman of the board of Welcome Traveler Stores, a lucrative chain of truck stops her father had founded. She was also a sharp, attractive, persuasive woman who knew how to get what she wanted. Sid wondered how much pressure she had put on the lawyer.

He settled back in his chair. “Bailey says you told him I was good at finding people.”

“You are. You’ve navigated those databases like an old pro.”

“Fine, if the computer would quit eating the results.”

“I told you I could fix that.” Jaz held a computer science degree as well as an MBA. She knew the inner workings of the machines as well as arcane methods of mining the Internet’s secrets. “Is that why you went traipsing back up the mountainside?”

“Partly. There were other issues.” Sid rumpled his brow. “Bailey mentioned a pollution case.”

“There was a story in the paper, but I didn’t get a chance to read it. Do you plan to call him?”

“Yes. But I doubt he’d be around this time of day.”

“I know he gets to his office early. Maybe not this early, but he likes to be well prepared before court opens.”

“Okay, Jaz, I’ll talk to him. That’s a promise.”

“Good. Let me know what he says.”

The pollution case led to the book's title, The Surest Poison. It's available from any bookstore, all the online sites, including for the Kindle, and at my website, ChesterDCammpbell.com. Crimespree Magazine called it "a top rate mystery by a gem of a writer."

Deadlines and Procrastination by Chester Campbell

I can sympathize with the plight Dana described last Sunday regarding her efforts to coordinate a blog book tour for a bunch of romance authors. I'm working on one for only yours truly, but it has become a real time-consumer. If you're new to the breed, here's what is involved. First you need a blog of your own. I participate in three other group blogs like Make Mine Mystery, but until a couple of months ago, I didn't have one of my own.

It's tough enough to keep up with when I'm scheduled on various blogs, but with my own, it means writing something every day or two. In getting ready for the tour, I was encouraged to post something everyday. I did that for a month, sweating down to a pint-sized figure of my former self (just kidding, I haven't lost a pound). Since then I've attempted to compose something scintillating at least three days a week, something that would attract the attention of the casual reader.

My problem now is that I'm currently immersed in getting ready for the blog tour, which starts next Wednesday. I'll appear as a guest on 15 sites between April 15 and May 1. So far I have finished only six of the posts. Not a good feeling less than a week before the starting gun fires.

Not to worry. I cut my teeth in the writing business as a newspaper reporter. I work best in the face of deadlines. My wife, bless her understanding soul, puts it a little differently. She says I procrastinate. What could be further from the truth? I finished doing my taxes a few days ago. Haven't sent it in yet, but I've still got five days.

When writing a novel, the ideas seem to pour out through my fingers in an unending stream. I've done a lot of thinking beforehand, and the general idea of the book keeps me on track. For the tour, I set up a daily schedule with a subject to be covered in each day's post. They're all related to my new book, The Surest Poison, but some are tailored to the particular blog site. One wants an interview, another wants something on promotion. When I start writing those, I have a pretty good idea of where I'm heading. My tour schedule is posted here.

It's my other committed posts that keep popping up on a regular basis where I've begun to wrack my brain for subjects. After stewing around a bit for something to write about on my Mystery Mania blog two days ago, I came up with the title "You gotta Noah 'bout the Ark." I then proceeded to tap out a humorous piece comparing the building of Noah's Ark to pursuing the fiction writer's "story arc." It brought a few laughs.

The bottom line is that all this wrestling in the blogosphere, plus my other efforts to promote the new book, has left me no time to get busy on my next project, a fifth book in the Greg McKenzie series. Maybe if I live till May 1 I'll find an opportunity to write "Chapter 1" and start creating a new mystery. Anyone like to join me?

On being a storyteller

A message writer I’m not. Some mystery novelists prefer to call attention to social problems by highlighting them in their books. That’s fine if it isn’t done in a preachy way. As for me, I’m quite content if I can tell a good story that will entertain my readers.

However, I have found that some readers will read things into your books that you never intended. When I met with a book club that had read The Marathon Murders, one woman was certain I had mentioned a lot of different cars because the plot revolved around the old Marathon Motor Works in Nashville. That was the farthest thing from my mind. I did it so my editor wouldn’t chastise me for having too many Fords or too many Chevrolets.


My new book due out in April, The Surest Poison, deals with a chemical dump that plays havoc with the health of people in a small rural community west of Nashville. I’m sure a lot of readers will presume that I wrote it to highlight the problem of water pollution from toxic waste.

If the book makes people more aware of the dangers that result from the careless handling of industrial chemicals, that’s fine. But unless they’ve been living under a rock for the past twenty or thirty years, I can’t imagine that any modestly knowledgeable adult would be unaware of the problem.

I chose the subject because it provided an opening for the creation of layers of tension that could be developed into an exciting story. And that’s what I do, tell stories.

This one came about when I was talking to a PI friend who has made quite a name for herself in the area of locating missing persons. She told me about a case she had worked a few years ago down around Jackson, Tennessee. It involved a company that faced disaster from trichloroethyelene dumped on its property by a previous owner that had gone out of business. She was hired to find the people responsible.

I took her case and moved it closer to home, adding a bunch of bad guys who had a history with my protagonist, new Nashville PI Sidney Lanier Chance. The idea struck a nerve because the first review I received, from author Tim Hallinan of the Poke Rafferty Bangkok mysteries, started out:

“The Surest Poison is a terrifically timely mystery about one of the most pressing problems of our era.”

Maybe it’s the old law of unintended consequences. If it’s considered a good environmental mystery, I’ll take credit for being socially concerned. But, really, all I wanted to do was be a good storyteller.

www.chesterdcampbell.com