The Detective's Word

So, I know you all have been waiting all weekend to know how it went with the detective! Here's what happened:

Last week I emailed both the Springdale and Fayetteville police departments, asking to interview a detective for a book I'd written. No response from Springdale. Fayetteville played phone tag with me for a day, until I finally spoke to Lieutenant Fields, who's in charge of the detective department. She told me to email her my questions and she'd find the right detective for me.

So I did. Well, she must've sent those questions on to the detective and not the rest of the story, because the email I got from the detective went something like this: "These are not questions I generally answer for the public. I need to know who you are, why you need this information, and why you contacted the Fayetteville police department." Let me tell you, I felt my heart leap into my throat! I thought, "Man, he's gonna send a patrole out and search my yard for dead bodies."

Keeping my calm, I emailed him back and explained what it's for, even offered to show him a copy of my signed contract. I didn't hear back from him until the next day. But he answered my questions! The odd thing was...most of my fabrication was correct. Well, many of the answers were, "Depends on the department. It could happen like this, or it could happen like this." Which made my scene plausible.

So I didn't have to change too much, and my first revision is off to the editor! We'll see how it goes from here. We're also in the process of changing the title. Oh, and I heard back from the Springdale police department today. Just emailed my questions off. I wonder if the responses will be different?

One last thing. Thanks to my dear friend M. Gray, I was inspired to enter a Christmas story contest. I can't tell you which entry is mine, but if you'd like to take a peek at the entries, go here. You have to read them all and voting doesn't start till the 16 of August, I think. Check it out. It'll be fun!

Contact with the Police Department

Thank you, Jamie Fields!

Lieutenant Fields from the Fayetteville police department called me back today. She asked me to email her my detective questions, and she'll find the right detective to answer them for me. I'm so excited! Of course, I want to meet with the detective in person, because one answer might lead to another question and so forth, but if I have to conduct it via email, that's better than nothing!

She was very respectful, wanted to know what it was for, and said she'd help out. I was nervous. Had this weird fear (is it weird?) that she'd be rude and like, "We're fighting crime. We don't have time for something like this."

You other authors out there, how have you approached things like this when you need to do research? Have you ever had someone tell you no? Was it discouraging?

Of course there's the chance that I'll never hear from Lt. Fields again. And then I'm back to square one. But that hasn't happened yet. So here I am, sitting by my phone, watching and waiting!

Detective Hamilton likes pickles!

Yesterday I finished the first draft of my detective scenes!!! Whoo-hoo! I'm so excited about this. Whew! What a job. I know there's going to be a lot of revising that I'll have to do. (after all, this is the first draft. I haven't even read through it yet.) I need to add setting and figure out a name for the chief. I came up with so many new names that I got tired of it and the chief got stuck with "The Chief."

Now I need to interview a detective and make sure my information is actually accurate. I've contacted two police stations and one police officer that goes to church with us. I got an email back from the Fayetteville police station, asking me to call. I did. She was in a meeting and told me she'd call back because she had some questions. It's been about three hours. I'll give her until tomorrow.

And it's time to start putting my villain's POV back in. Originally I had several passages in his POV, but I cut them for the sake of word count. Now I get to up my word count. I have my publisher's permission. And my editor wants the villain's POV! How exciting! I'm going to need to create a few more passages, but he's not going to get the same amount of screen time as the kidnapped girls or the detective.

We're really getting somewhere!

And then last night I realized that Detective Hamilton has a pickle fetish. Any kind of pickle. He likes a cold, dripping pickle when he's stuck on a case. It refreshes his mind. And I didn't include that anywhere. I'm going to have to insert pickles.

Police station, anyone?

Wow. Last night got super busy for me. I was writing my last new detective scene for the night and needed to know which PDQ (neighborhood police station) would be the one to serve Victoriaville, Quebec, which is where part of my story takes place. My detective was currently in Montreal and needed to make a quick trip to Victoriaville to try and find some missing characters. I was just going to get this tiny piece of information and then finish the scene and go to bed.

I opened a can of worms! First thing I discovered is that Victoriaville is two hours outside of Montreal, and therefore not serviced by the PDQ. Huh. That meant I had to go back and change several scene locations and references to the PDQ. It also meant this wasn't going to be a quick trip, but rather an overnight stay in Victoriaville. I actually got really nervous and started thinking, "Maybe none of this story takes place in Montreal at all!" But then I checked my area codes and calmed down. Yes, Montreal was the right city for my detective to examine first. (Funny how these stories write themselves sometimes.)

Next thing I discovered, as I'm pouring over the Victoriaville city website and exercising the gift of tongues (I don't speak any French), is that Victoriaville is actually so small, it has no police station! Well. So where do the citizens go? A few more google searches showed me all police type thingies in the area. I picked the closest one--nope, that one's emergencies only, not arrests and detentions. Okay, next. Nope, that one's the RCMP--Canadian equivalent to the FBI. See, in this book, the RCMP are the good guys and the police are the bad guys. So we couldn't have it be the RCMP. Next one, and I thought this one would be it. A police station in Drummondville. I thought. It was hard to tell because again the website was entirely in French.

I placed my scene in Drummondville and continued to write when my mind suddenly put the word "Ecole" together with what I'd seen on the website and I realized, "This isn't a police station. It's a police academy." Doh! How embarrasing that would've been! So, next one out. A real police station, I believe. Whew! I got my scene placed in a city, and I got the distances from one city to the next, thanks to google maps.

And it was an hour past when I thought I'd finish for the night.

Anyone want to come with me on a research tour of Victoriaville, Canada?