Indie Ink

                The first short story I sold was to Green’s Fiction for the Family magazine back in the mid 70’s. It was a story about a boy with a stuttering problem trying to fit into his new school and it was told through the point of view of a girl in his parochial classroom. I found the editor’s comment interesting. “You have the nun talking in clichés, but then that’s the way they do talk. Consider Jack Frost sold.”

            Nothing like editorial comments and suggestions! Authors commonly rewrite entire novels at the direction of the editor of the publishing house opting to purchase their work – and that’s after they’ve rewritten huge sections on their own before submission. I will take a hardnosed stance and say if you’re not willing to edit and rewrite, take up something else.

            The hardest part of being a serious writer is getting your work published. Gone with the Wind was rejected 25 times before it was sold! Now you could write the equivalent of that American classic and be rejected by a publishing house because you don’t have a large enough platform. The name of the game is selling books and if the author does not already have a following through social media, teaching, previous sales, public speaking (all of that is the platform), chances are his or her tour de force will languish in the slush pile of rejected manuscripts.

            Enter the brave new world of indie publishing. Writers can independently upload their books into e-books or arrange for publishing at point to sale so the actual book is created upon purchase and then sent to the buyer. Indie authors get to keep much more from each sale as well. There are many excellent indie books out there and even the big names in the literary world use indie as well as traditional publishing now.

            This gives us readers many more books at much lower cost, such as free to 99 cents. On the down side, there’s a lot of poor writing being uploaded and even the reviews are slanted. I wrote a review for a friend but admitted in my first sentence that she was a fellow writer. I did feel comfortable giving her a good review because it was really an excellent book, but some reviewers are trying to do a friend a favor without being honest about the book. I do have hopes that good books will rise to the top of reading lists and the lousy ones will sink into the oblivion they deserve.              

            Still the publishing houses need to sit up and smell the coffee. They need to give the new, promising authors more promotion if they don’t want to become an anachronism. For starters, “platform” should not be a factor in selecting manuscripts, but rather, quality writing. The fact is the traditional publishing houses are now in competition with the very people who used to be their clients – not a winning market position to be sure. Many are developing an independent publishing arm to assist writers who want to self publish quality work.

            Publishing is in flux and that’s not even looking at e-magazines and writing content for the internet! Johannes Gutenberg would be flabbergasted.

Accidents Will Happen

 

 

 

Chapter 10

 

 

 

Bucci scanned the laboratory and reached for his cell phone. As he waited for the crime lab to answer, the detective opened the top drawer of the one desk in the room and pawed through its contents. Pulling up a plastic employee ID card, Bucci recognized the balding man who had given them directions to the lab. Next to the ID tag, sat a silver key.

            “Henderson, run down and see if you can grab the guy we met on the way in.”

            “On it.” Henderson replied, flinging open the lab door.

            Bucci picked up the key and found it opened the lower left drawer. Under a pile of files, Bucci’s thumb scraped against a small latch. Pulling up on the metal edge revealed a hidden compartment in which sat a lone USP flash drive. Suddenly Bucci heard the lab director’s voice on his phone.

            “Yeah, Gene. We need some of your eggheads pronto. I’m in the University chem lab and have no idea what to look for that would tell me anything about that designer drug you guys identified.”

            By the time the CSI team arrived, Bucci had the flash drive inserted in one of the lab computers and was staring at formulations that looked like cuneiform scratchings.   As he scrolled down, a list of Middle East embassy names and numbers appeared. Whatever Leere was working on was international in scope and deadly in plan. His next calls were to Homeland Security and Officer Henderson.

             Agent Denis of Homeland Security followed Lieutenant Henderson as he boarded the 747. Having found the door to Leere’s apartment open and the rooms torn apart as if the tenant had been in a rush, Henderson had ascertained the nervous man at the University was on the lamb. When he spoke to Bucci, his friend directed him to the county airport.

The two government men walked slowly down the center aisle and stopped at 22c. Without a word, a balding man rose from his seat and allowed the cuffs to clamp shut over his wrists.

Three hours later, Agent Denis and Detective Bucci sat in a back booth in Salty’s Bar.

“When we re-interviewed Trevellian’s wife, she remembered she had gone into the kitchen to cut a few more, what she called, “sausage thingyies” but she dropped the knife and put it in the dishwasher. Turns out that was the prop knife but she didn’t know that.  She left the real knife she used to cut the sausages on the counter. Apparently, Trevellian used that for his rehearsal, thinking it was the prop.”

“So how did that lead you to Leere?” The agent took a sip from his lager.

“Trevellian’s latest “protégé” had been an unwitting guinea pig for Leere. What she thought was a love potion was really the designer drug. When we raided his lab we found the evidence that he was planning on selling his formula to the highest bidder.”

“Terrorist, you mean.”  Denis thought for a moment. “In other words, the death of the Professor led to the discovery of the plan to sell LSD that is 40 times more powerful and modified to be mixed in the public water supply.”

Bucci nodded. “And it wasn’t murder or suicide so the grieving widow gets 5 million bucks of comfort. Who knows, maybe for a nice honeymoon with Conan Farrell after a suitable mourning period, of course. 

“Whew! All because of a misplaced prop knife… I guess accidents will happen!”  

THE END

 

Meet the author of this chapter: 

Gene LeDoux, a retired CSI chemist, has been a model railroad buff since his teen years when he wrote several articles for Model Trains magazine.  Writing about his favorite hobby led to writing scientific articles and professional reports throughout his forty years in the Monroe County Crime Lab.