Even though it’s quite desirable these days for many mystery authors to want to try and write “dark crime fiction,” when I first started writing I used to wonder, and worry about, why my own stories seemed to be just naturally filled with so much darkness…and pain. I assumed it was because the career I’d chosen early on in life, law enforcement, was mostly comprised of witnessing, and sometimes participating in, events that were filled with darkness and pain, and it had therefore skewed my vision of the world, leaking into my personal life like water from a chronically dripping faucet. But in 2006 in an incident of pure serendipity, I learned something from one of my sons that not only answered my question for me; it set my heart free both as a writer, and a father, forever.

From 1986 until 1998 I lived in the small town of Forks, WA (Yes, the same Forks, WA of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight teen vampire series fame) with my then wife, our five young sons, and our dog Honey Bunny. I was the chief of police in the small community of La Push (another Twilight locale) 15 miles from Forks and I worked long hours, leaving home early every morning and usually getting home very late. When I say Honey was “our” dog, that’s somewhat of a misnomer. She was the boys’, and my wife’s dog from the very beginning. I wanted nothing to do with her. It wasn’t because I don’t like dogs. I love dogs. It was the fact that with five little mouths to feed, and adding the responsibility of taking care of a sixth, I believed she would only be trouble. An added burden that our already troubled family did not need.

She showed up early one September day as the school year started, a yellow Lab-Golden Retriever mix puppy, maybe six months old, who someone had dumped in our neighborhood on Trillium Avenue; for presumed reasons which would quickly reveal themselves. I happened to be home early for once, to greet my kids as they got off the bus after their first day of school, and witnessed Honey’s opening act. She was at the bus stop too, having spent the morning hanging around my wife and worming her way into her too soft heart, and when the pneumatic door of the school bus opened with a “whoosh” and the first child, our Matt, started to come off, Honey made her move. She leapt three feet into the air and clamped her sharp, needle like puppy teeth onto a sleeve of Matt’s new jacket we’d just bought the week before at Sears for forty dollars…and nearly ripped it off his arm. Then she went after another kid, and another, her excited, playful barks mixing with the screams of my boys; first in terror, and then a few moments later, delight, when they heard their mother say they could keep her, “just until we find out who her owners are.” You can probably guess the rest. We did, eventually, find out who Honey’s “owners” were, and in the end they turned out to be the Lewis’ who lived at 451 Trillium.

The dog was a complete maniac. She was the Energizer Bunny on steroids, powered by the world’s largest lithium ion battery. From dawn until dark, she jumped, barked, chewed, chased, crapped and peed her way into the hearts and minds of our family; everyone except me. And after a week long experiment to see how she might work out as an “inside dog,” and then another week of repairing all the damage she’d done, it was dear old dad who built a dog house for her in one corner of the backyard, and then went to ACE Hardware for a steel ground stake, and length of chain, to secure her there after she had chewed through three stout ropes in a row. She was what loggers around Forks in those days called “buck wild.”

We hadn’t had her a month, when playing a game of “catch the Frisbee” with the boys in our back yard, Honey boomeranged into the air wildly after the colorful spinning plastic disc, and then landed on the grass wrong, shattering one of her hind legs. I don’t know which sounded worse; her heart wrenching, pitiful cries from the excruciating pain she was in, or the heart wrenching, pitiful cries of all five of my sons who believed to a certainty that they knew what was about to happen next: a quick trip out to the city dump, and a merciful shot behind one ear with a .22 rifle to put an end to her suffering. Instead, I took one look at the suffering faces of my little boys, and then loaded Honey into the back of my patrol car and drove her sixty miles, with lights and siren on, to the nearest Veterinarian which was in Port Angeles, WA. The price the Vet quoted me for the surgery to repair her damaged leg was three hundred and eighty six dollars, the equivalent of a thousand dollars back then, and it was either surgery, or having her put down on the spot. I told him to go ahead and do the surgery, no matter what it cost. Honey had quickly become a huge part of my kids’ lives, and having her destroyed because of money would have been putting a price on their innocence and their right to happiness as children. And besides, she was a member of the family by then. An obnoxious member of our family, but family just the same.

Eventually, there were rules for the kids which my wife and I both agreed on; at least in the beginning. Honey was THEIR dog and therefore she was THEIR responsibility to care for; taking equal turns of course. The problem was that she had now grown so large, and was still so amped up all the time with sheer puppy exuberance; she was just physically too much for them to handle. It would take two boys to “walk” her around the neighborhood on her chain, and Honey would basically drag them all the way. One day Sam, who was, I think, nine or ten at the time, took Honey on a walk by himself and ended up being drug down the street half a block by her until he was rescued by two of his brothers. Later at the house, as we were picking small bits of gravel from his face and applying band-aids and antiseptic cream to his road rash, he tearfully confessed that he hadn’t wanted to let go of Honey’s chain because he feared “she might run away from home.” Oh God. I could only hope.

But Honey Bunny was a survivor, eking out an existence inside her doghouse that first cold and rainy winter. Rarely was she taken for a walk, or even let off her chain. By spring she still seemed as happy as ever, wearing down and killing a huge area of new spring grass around her dog house the size of an alien crop circle, the circumference of which was the maximum reach of her chain. Another topic for my wife and I to fight over; just as we had done all winter long over a myriad of other small, domestic things, made larger than real life by the significance of hurt we each attached to them. It had truly been our winter of discontent, and, as it turned out, it was the last winter we would ever spend together.

The next fall my wife got her own place in town and moved out, taking three of our sons with her, and I stayed in our home with the two boys who hadn’t wanted to go; Matt, the second to the oldest, and Dillon, the middle boy. And, because my wife’s new landlord didn’t allow pets, Honey Bunny. I hadn’t written Little Blue Whales yet and couldn’t have then, not even if you’d put a gun to my head, because I know now that I was busy living it; the darkness, and the pain. I cared for my two sons the best that I could. I threw myself into my work. I planned my escape. I shot at Honey Bunny through my bedroom window nights with a BB gun.

I couldn’t sleep then. Not very often, and even when I did, not for very long. And I NEEDED to sleep. It was my only respite, the only relief from the never ending nightmare and agony of watching my family being torn apart in front of my very eyes; knowing that we had both let things go too far and that I was now powerless to save any of us, let alone myself. Poor Honey must have felt the same way, because in the middle of the night, every night, she would start to howl; a long, keening, mournful cry that seemed to go right through me. Racked by guilt, but burning with anger and frustration, I would throw open my bedroom window and yell at her to shut up. When she didn’t, I would fire a round or two at her in the dark in her direction until she did shut up, and then slink back inside her dog house. I’m sure I hit her sometimes, firing in the dark like that, because on occasion I would hear a sharp yelp; and then she would be quiet the rest of the night. After awhile though, it wasn’t even necessary to shoot. All I had to do was stick the gun out the window and shake it. The sound of the BB’s rattling inside the magazine of the gun was enough to make her cower, and disappear into the shadows. But Honey never entirely stopped howling. Her emotional pain, like my own, seemed perpetual.

The day after Christmas that year I filed for divorce, and in early summer I found a new job as the chief of police in a small coastal town in southern Oregon. I went to court and fought for custody of all of my sons, and lost. Fathers who seek sole custody of their children rarely win. Fathers who plan on moving out of state, and seek sole custody of their children, never win. But I was going anyhow. I believed, then, that was what I had to. Honey Bunny was still my responsibility, so I tried to find her a good home before I moved. But when I couldn’t, I called Animal Control to come and pick her up. The Animal Control officer came to our house with his van and put her in the cage in back. My son Dillon was pleading with me and crying; begging me not to let him take her. And once he’d driven away with Honey to the animal shelter, to be euthanized in a week if nobody claimed her, every day for that next, longest week of my life, Dillon came to me with tears in his eyes, begging me to bring her back home. He even promised to get a paper route and turn all of his earnings over to me, so he could “pay for Honey’s fines.” He was only thirteen then. A little boy with a heart so big that it easily overshadowed my own adult one; like the moon does when it swallows up the sun in a solar eclipse.

I moved to Oregon. I cannot truly describe the loneliness, the feelings of utter despair, and regret, and loss I felt then over what had happened to all of us. Like my character, Kevin Kearnes, I sought to forget as much of it as I could, and at times I even prayed that the same black curtain of repressed memory which had fallen over Kevin in my novel would descend upon me also. But thank God I was never as unlucky as he was. Oddly, the one thing that stayed vividly in my mind, and became the iconic symbol of the failure of my marriage, and what it did to our children, was the wasted life, and ignoble death, of Honey Bunny. The memories I had of her; every unkind word I had cursed her with, every BB I had fired at her, and the ultimate death sentence I had handed down to her, turned in my gut for years like the blade of a twisted knife. I was tormented by that act, I suffered for it, I cried at times because of it. Finally, I began to write my novel, and there was plenty of darkness and pain in it to go around; a little too much for some editors, as it turned out. Kevin Kearnes, like me, had lost his children through divorce. And just like me, Kearnes had been forced to move on, ending up on the coast of Oregon. But you won’t find any scenes involving the family pet having to be sacrificed as a casualty of divorce in my book. I wanted to put Honey in it; but I just could not bring myself to write about her. It was all too real.

I started this blog piece by telling you about something one of my sons told me eight years later, that put an entirely new perspective on my personal feelings about writing darkly, and painfully, in fiction. I guess I should tell you now what that was. Ironically, it came about my through my own blog that I had for a short while, but took down from the internet because I was being stalked by a local mentally ill man, and I didn’t want to give him another five gallon can of gasoline to throw on the already raging fires inside his psyche in the form of intimate, and personal information about me. In 2006 I did a short confessional piece on my blog (can’t even remember the blog’s name now) about Honey Bunny; what had happened to her, and how guilty I still felt about it. I just couldn’t keep it inside any longer, so I thought, why not do it up right, and spill my guts to the world?

The following day I received an email from my oldest son, Shane, in Washington. He had read my blog and was writing to tell me that, in fact, Honey Bunny had only recently passed away a couple of months before. A girl he knew from his high school had adopted her. Their family lived on a little ranch in the woods a few miles outside Forks and had all kinds of farm animals as well as other dogs, and even some cats, too. This girl’s family was very involved in 4H activities, and Honey had been entered in several 4H contests over the years. She had been a cherished, and much loved member of her second family when she passed away. She had lived a good life; a great life in fact. At first, I was stunned. Then bewildered. Then absolutely, joyously, elated! This wasn’t some fictional “happy ending.” This was real life. My life. And now this one painful part of it had not only been repaired, it had been restored to me. Not every terrible thing had befallen us after all, and to me, this truly was a miracle of redemption.

Now I don’t worry about my writing so much. I subscribe to the belief that a writer should write what they must; what is deep inside of them at the time they are engaged in the act of creating. Whether it’s darkness or light, pain or pleasure. Or something, or somewhere, in between. Because your writing, like your life, will someday all come into balance for you…if that’s what is meant to be. I don’t think that we write so much for the purpose of having an effect on others, as we do because we have already been affected by others ourselves. And that even goes for little stray dogs.

Honey Bunny

Ken Lewis is a police chief and author who lives in Oregon. His debut crime fiction novel Little Blue Whales won the 2010 Public Safety Writers Association First Grand Prize for Fiction. His second novel The Sparrow’s Blade, the sequel to Little Blue Whales, was published on Valentine’s Day, 2011 and is another work of dark crime fiction, written from the heart.

Ken’s website

Beginning Friday, April 1st through the end of the month, Testarossa will be available on Amazon Kindle for the low, low, LOW price of $1.99. That’s cheaper than a cup of Joe at Starbucks, and it’s the gift that keeps on giving…especially when you hit Chapter 15.

Look for other titles published by Krill Press on sale in Kindle format beginning April 1st.

Little Blue Whales – Kenneth R. Lewis

The Sparrow’s Blade – Kenneth R. Lewis

Counsel of the Wicked – Roberto Kusminsky

The Big Grabowski – Carolyn J. Rose and Mike Nettleton

Sometimes a Great Commotion – Carolyn J. Rose and Mike Nettleton

We ain’t foolin’!

It’s a gift that seems to keep on giving. When I have an opportunity to share a piece that has nothing to do with TESTAROSSA, crime novels, publishing, book-selling, or writing in general, I am thrilled. Please take a look at the piece I was privileged to contribute to the wonderful blog Meanderings and Muses.

Thank you so much, Kaye Barley!

TESTAROSSA, and to a smaller extent, I, have been getting some attention lately. The book was mentioned on a local Southern California site called Yo! Venice. I did a cable access interview recently with Joan Quinn on her show The Joan Quinn Profiles. I did a blog interview on a romance readers’ site called Love. Romance. Passion not long ago. This is a good thing, right? I Google myself a lot—more than I’d care to admit, and frankly I’m stunned that I’m admitting it here—to see how the latest reviews for the book are looking, or if those blog interviews I submitted last month are up yet.

I’m terribly distracted.

I’m trying to get the sequel to Testarossa finished. Now, mind you, the thing is done. It’s been written. But, like any first draft, it has its problems. At first, I believed the way to solve those problems was to begin again. This has become crazy-making, so now I’m simply trying to improve upon what I’ve already done, but it’s not good enough. I’m a better writer than I was when I wrote Testarossa, and now, I’m never good enough. It’s not good enough.

I’m incredibly distracted.

I’m reviewing crime and mystery novels for Suspense Magazine. The folks at Suspense are very good about deadlines—I don’t have one. But I don’t want to sit on a book that the author knows is being read for review—and that I received for free—too long. I submitted Testarossa to them for review months ago, and they’ve yet to post one, so I know how it feels. People—authors—are busy, so I’m not worried, nor am I complaining.

I’m painfully distracted.

I paid good money to have this website built, and I know that in order to drive people to the site, and therefore make sales and get the word out about Testarossa, I must blog. I read other blogs, so I know that others are doing what they need to do to drive people to their sites. They are in the top echelons of blogging, they are the kings and queens of blogdom. They are doing it right; they are getting the word out; they are constantly at it. I can name them off the top of my head, these crime fiction writers, these mystery novelists. I follow them. I comment on their blog posts. I know who they are.

I’m horrendously distracted.

I long to take off, get in the car and drive up to the central California coast, rent that house on the beach in Cambria, and write. And I know that if I voiced that need, it would be met. I have a wonderful, supportive family. But I’d miss out. I’d miss the kids’ baseball games, I’d miss spending time with my husband, who’s been insanely distracted himself lately, I’d miss the very distractions I’m longing to get away from.

Will all this go away if I take a step back, regroup, go with the distractions for a while? Will I lose momentum if I don’t keep up with getting the word out? Will my agent punt me out of her life if I take any longer with this next book?

See? I’m a little distracted.

I’d love to hear about your distractions, and how you cope. Writers, I know you have them. Maybe your distractions will distract me from mine, and then perhaps I can focus again.

I began my love affair with books—the-holding-on-to-them-in-my-heart-and-soul-long-after-I-read-them kind of affair—in childhood. I clung to certain genres—horror (Stephen King), crime and police procedurals (Joseph Wambaugh), and romance (Sidney Sheldon, Barbara Taylor Bradford, and Judith Kranz). When I wanted one, I went there; when I wanted the other, I went over there. I’m hard pressed to recall even a smooch between characters in any King or Wambaugh novel, and I guess with the exception of The Other Side of Midnight, by Sidney Sheldon, there wasn’t a crime in the forefront of any of the romance novels I enjoyed. So, when I set out to write Testarossa, I vowed to change that.

Admittedly, I came to the writing game late in life. Combining genres has certainly been done prior to my arrival on the scene, but being a particular fan of the crime fiction genre, I didn’t see a strong show of romance in anything I read, and if I did, it was in the form of the revolving door into Stone Barrington’s bedroom in the Stuart Woods novels, or the frustrating relationship Jesse Stone had with his ex-wife in the Robert Parker series. Because I believe cops fall in love, and are capable of staying in love, despite the grisly careers they’ve chosen, I decided to include a very strong romance in my otherwise crimey crime novel, Testarossa.

When all was said and done, and my agent and my editor liked the book well enough, they both said, OK, now what? What are you? They both came up with romance-suspense. Well, OK, so…I’m next to Jude Deveraux at Borders? Uh, have you two read chapter 12, the one with the decaying body and the Hefty bag reference? Don’t knock it, they both said. Romance –suspense is all the rage now. I was nervous. I saw myself as a crime fiction writer, in the vein of Robert Crais, and my hero, Joe Wambaugh. I wanted to at least be on the same side of the bookstore as those two. Alas, I’m not in any bookstore, but that’s not my point. My point is, I think certain genres work well together, and as readers, we benefit most of all.

While these two genres are not my cup of tea, I know for a fact that science fiction and fantasy are the latest combo to hit it big. Another combo, and this has become my all-time favorite, is literary crime fiction. Read just the first few pages of chapter one of R.J. Ellory’s A Quiet Belief in Angels, and you sense something special is taking place. No longer are we burdened with a teller of stories; this man is a storyteller, and he hooks you from the get-go with alluring words and smart sentence structure. Ellory is an incredibly gifted writer. Again, we, the reader, benefit. I am currently reading the debut novel The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly, and will be reviewing it soon for Suspense Magazine. Another superb writer, another engaging crime story, and I am immersed.

I wrote Testarossa as a crime novel first. Then up popped that pesky romance—and it’s a big one. I devote a good third of the book to the relationship between John Testarossa and Karen Gennaro. They fight, they make love, they talk, they banter, they play, they cry, they laugh, they eat—oh, boy, do they eat—and to me, their relationship is real and it’s complicated and it’s sexy and it’s hot. And then there’s the crime, or crimes, that John and his partners have to contend with, cases they have to solve. I think it works, as do those who have read and reviewed the book. Testarossa is getting attention, both as a book of crime fiction, and as a romance.

As readers, and as writers, we have options, and I like them. Want a little fantasy with your sci-fi? Here. Want a little love with your crime? Here ya go. A little literary with your murder and mayhem? We got ya covered. I like this.

I guess maybe, if I were in Barnes and Noble, they’d have to create a new shelf for writers like me – Crime/Romance. Oh! Or, better yet, stick Testarossa in both crime and romance. Now, there’s an idea.

How about the evil serial killer who wears a slippery black suit that is evidence-proof, can fold himself into the tightest of spaces, and seems to possess endless amounts of patience before he strikes? Sends shivers down your spine, right?

Then there is the super-hero—the jaded cop/former Special Forces/former detective and sometime lawyer—who gets involved in chasing down the worst of the worst, all the while flying under the radar of the law or his former superiors, getting violently beat up throughout but still manages to chase the killer down anyway, cuff him, and waltz off into the sunset with the prettiest girl, whom he rescued from the serial killer. Remember that one?

Well, if the book was well-written and the characters were well-drawn and believable, then the above examples of suspension of disbelief work. How many can’t seem to get the character of Hannibal Lecter out of their minds? Can we buy into a killer who can analyze his patients, and then have them for dinner—literally? And what about Buffalo Bill, who kidnapped girls so that he could make himself an outfit out of their skin? Plausible? And then there’s the idea of a young female FBI trainee who is sent to track down this Buffalo Bill by getting information from a manipulative mad man who’d rather savor her with some Chianti and talk murder? Buy it? When the plot, characters and dialogue are written with the skill of Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs, the answer is yes, yes, and yes.

Suspension of disbelief, a phrase coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is a willingness to suspend one’s critical faculties and believe the unbelievable. Literature is full of it. Ishmael, getting into it with a giant whale; pigs and horses coming together against their two-legged enemies for the common good; Moses parting the Red Sea. All are classics, and all suspend disbelief to some degree. Most modern fiction—especially crime fiction, mysteries and suspense—depend on quite a bit of suspension of disbelief, and most of the time we all buy into it. The writing is terrific, the plot is exciting and the characters are real and finely tuned.

I often ask myself as I’m writing a scene, can I get away with this? When I need to go as far as consulting an expert, I ask them, is it possible? As a crime fiction writer, I need to be accurate with certain details. I’m portraying a profession I know nothing about. I’ve never been a cop, I’m not married to one, I have none in my family. I research, and yes, I make a lot of it up. When it comes to certain specifics, how I portray character or events, yes, I make sure I’m on track. But do I also toss out a bit of implausibility, just to shake things up a bit? Sure, because sometimes it is possible.

Testarossa is a work of fiction. I researched some things, but I made most of it up. I’m a fiction writer. It’s what I do. Reminding all law enforcement that I am a fiction writer, if you have issues with how I have portrayed characters or events in the book, hit me in an email and we’ll discuss it. I’ve been looking for cops to consult with.

As writers, lets not fear the absurd. Do it well, paint your characters with lots of true, vivid colors, and your events with humor and heart. Toss it up there and see where it lands. The best of the best out there have made a living doing just that. Don’t believe me? Read some of the mystery, suspense and crime fiction books on the bestsellers lists.

Hit me on Facebook, or drop me an email if you’re going to be there and I’ll try to meet up with you!

I will be in Ventura, CA

They will be taking calls and the interview will stream over the Internet at www.am1400coach.com.

Tune in if you can. Calling in would be even nicer. Testarossa and steroids will be the topic of conversation.

***JUST ADDED***: I will be also be interviewed on the Kevin Slaten show at Sports Radio 1380 AM KSLG in St. Louis. The interview is this Wednesday, September 15 (tomorrow) at 4 p.m. CST, 2 p.m. PST. The show’s website is: http://www.team1380.net/pages/3238533.php

Kevin has been at the forefront of the steroid scandal since it broke, and he is apparently very outspoken. We will be talking Steroids and Testarossa. You can listen live on the site.