Two years ago I attended a workshop, with my son, on writing villains, a topic much different from the ones I had written about in the past. I’d just finished another manuscript and was looking for a new project so thought, why not? It could be fun, and it was. Here’s a taste of it:
CHAMBERLAIN SMEG was old, at least that’s the way he felt, that’s why he’d retired. Washed up, burnt out, unappreciated by younger cops clawing for his job. He’d been a good detective but methods change, times change. Besides, his twenty-two year old stepson PAUL GALLOWAY was a project that needed his focus. Before she died, the boy’s mother had plucked small gems of talent from him but Smeg kept missing them as they flew by, novel writing that looked a whole lot like unemployment was one example. Maybe video games could be turned into a career. One that paid so he could move out of Smeg’s house. Not that he wasn’t fond of the kid but when Smeg was his age he’d finished college, got a job and knew how to fry an egg.
Smeg had just settled into his favourite chair with a well-worn novel when MEAGHAN BYATT rang his door bell. She was one of those upstart detectives, the kind rising to the top, like bread with too many air bubbles. The sergeant had sent her on a half-baked errand to solicit his services. Apparently the sergeant wasn’t done with him. Apparently she’d decided he should mentor Byatt. Like another stepson. Just what he needed. But with a body wedged up against a tree off Whitemud Freeway, and little time to consider his options before rigor mortis set in, he was right back in the thick of things.
Set in Edmonton, Alberta in 2015, Smeg is a humorous, cozy crime novel that has the sexagenarian finding his worth, not only as a cop, but as a stepfather and friend, in sifting through the array of eccentric suspects who may have been responsible for that untimely death.
