“Mom, I’m going to be a writer someday.” I was only fourteen and I’d made
pronouncements like this before about being a police officer and, most notably,
becoming a waiter. So my mom
smiled at me indulgently and said, “Fine, but you have to write me a mystery
one day.”
Fast forward twenty-four years and I’ve done it.
“One Death at a Time” is my first novel, a detective story
told in the classic first-person voice of the private eye who’s seen it
all.
It tells the story of Jack
Strayhorn, an ex-L.A.P.D. detective who was killed in 1948 chasing a suspect in
the Black Dahlia murder.
He was
reborn a vampire and uses his powers to solve the crimes that the human police
force can’t.
In this first book of
the Twelve Stakes series, Jack is on the trail of a supernatural hitman who
took out a city councilman and an innocent girl.
When the councilman turns out to be the eldest son of a
powerful Faerie clan, Jack is drawn into an underground supernatural war.
This is probably not what my mom had in mind when she asked
for a mystery. When I was growing
up, her shelves were crammed with the likes of Agatha Christie, Mickey
Spillaine, and the Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I loved science fiction and fantasy
like Isaac Asimov and Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”, but I was a voracious
reader and fell in love with those detective stories early on. I loved the eccentric characters, the
dramatic reveals, and the frantic chases through foggy midnight streets. Holmes still tops my list of all-time
favorite fictional characters.
Of course, Holmes and I have something in common. He was an addict just like I am. My experiences with drug and alcohol
addiction inspired my novel as much as pipe smoking detectives and blood
drinking vampires.
I started drinking and using drugs in high school, picked up
speed in college, and crashed and burned in my early thirties.
I finally hit bottom three years ago. I
ended up in the psych ward for two weeks followed by a month in rehab.
I lived in sober living for the next
nine months, trying to get my life and marriage back together.
During that time, a good friend of mine
urged me to start writing about everything I’d been through.
“But make it supernatural,” he said.
“Like vampires in A.A.!”
The idea
was infectious.
A vampire
alcoholic.
Alcoholics Anonymous as
a secret cover for vampires trying to help each other survive their
disease.
The addict as monster and
the monster as hero.
One day at a
time, one death at a time.
The
Twelve Stakes series was born.
My books are a strange alchemy of murder mysteries, fantasy
stories, growing up in Los Angeles, and addiction and recovery. But it wouldn’t have been possible
without my mom’s early influence on my imagination. I learned from those old books that even though the heroes
aren’t always the good guys, it’s their darkness that makes their stories
impossible to put down. Like my
characters, they are forced to turn their curses into gifts in order to survive
the shadowy worlds they inhabit.
Writing Jack’s story helped me rewrite my own story. I stayed sober, got my life back on
track, and fulfilled a lifelong dream and a long held promise. I wrote my book. And I wrote my mom a mystery.
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