In my daytime career as a consultant, more and more often I’m working with clients who are building a replacement for my knowledge and expertise. They take our conversations, my deliverables (reports and analyses) and feed that into their own Claude or ChatGPT subscription, along with other information, workflows, and related material. Then, on the phone, while talking to me, clients take the output from their AI and “vet” it against what I say. If what I say doesn’t match the AI output, the client challenges me to do better.

I can’t describe how this feels knowing that I have no choice but to participate in my own destruction. In the consulting world, we are scrambling to figure out how to add value. And more and more, the only way we add value is because somewhere along the line there is a regulation that requires “HIL” or “human-in-the-loop.” That means a human being reviews and approves or corrects the output of AI. That’s what I am. A human in a loop with an AI that does the work.

The same thing is happening to fiction authors, except we’re doing it to ourselves. Instead of being the creative force, I see more and more stepping back, reducing themselves to being the human in the loop. Not the author, not the editor… just some kind of approver, like a middle manager or late-career consultant.

So here’s the problem that I haven’t heard anyone who uses AI as their primary author think about. And remember, I’m also an AI engineer, so I understand the implications a bit better than the average novelist:

If you create an AI-based process for generating fiction, then you’re creating something that anyone can run. Not just you.

That means one day your readers will not be buying your books.

They will be starting up Claude or whatever and having it write a book in your style, without you involved. You will see zero money. You will get zero sales. Your readers won’t need you anymore because they can write books like yours… without you.

If this is what you want—if you’re happy with publishing 100 or more books a year under four pseudonyms and making a little money off of that—then that’s your choice. Just recognize that you’re putting yourself out of a job.

But if you’re like me, and you write because you’re a goddammed writer and you sweat over every goddammed detail, then don’t automate that.

Celebrate your human self. Find readers who want human-generated books with human-generated flaws (and human-generated genius). Find readers who are up at 2 a.m. and want to read something because they have an ache in their soul and they need another human voice that has an achy soul.

If you really are a writer, then you know exactly what I’m talking about here. You love language. You love story. Words aren’t just words—they have color, texture, and sometimes flavor. There are words that hit like a mother’s kiss and words that grind like a splinter under your fingernail.

If you really are a writer, then it’s in your bones. You write because that’s how you process the world, process your trauma, process your joy.

So what if you only write one book or one book every five years? You’re a writer. You’re not a word factory.

Now, yes, there are all kinds of other problems to solve like sales and marketing. Yes, your novel is struggling for air against millions of other novels. But that’s a marketing problem, not a writing problem. Writing hundreds of novels will not solve your marketing problem—it will only create hundreds of books that you still have to pay to advertise. Do you have that kind of budget?

Sure, you need help writing. I do, too. I’ve done workshops and writer’s groups and worked under editors. AI can help you with your grammar and spelling and explaining the three-act structure. I’m not saying “don’t ever use AI,” I’m just saying “if being a writer is more important to you than writing a lot of books really fast, then don’t use AI to do your writing for you.”

You want to make money from fiction writing? Yeah, we all do. But you know what? Making money from fiction writing is incredibly difficult. You have advertising, marketing, printing, inventory, research, and other costs. On top of that, you may have children (and in the US, you have health insurance costs). You need a car or a motorbike or bus fare. You have rent or a mortgage. You need to eat.

I’ve been there. I tried to make it happen for ten years. I mooched off my family members. I mooched off my friends and the occasional girlfriend who took pity on me. I took risks with not having insurance. I learned how to fix my car with wire and zip ties. I had no personal life. I traveled nowhere. As much as my fellow Rochestarians love it, bumming around Rochester NY in a rusty Toyota is not the same as hanging out with Hemingway and Stein in Paris.

Reality is that you have a physical body. You eventually will get tired of writing and your output will decline. Then what will you do? You need to have something else to support your writing. You need to get a job. Maybe it’s gig work, or consulting, or security guard, or plumber, or interior design, or owning a laundromat. The bonus of have a day job or gig is that it will give you material for your stories.

A job will allow also you to save money for when you just are too tired or too sick to write. That day WILL come. It comes for all of us.

That’s life, kiddo.

In all honesty, the world doesn’t need more novelists or more novels. It does need more doctors, nurses, teachers, firefighters, cooks, social workers, garbage collectors, carpenters, mechanics… all the people who make society function, for us, the humans.

Someone in the world might need YOUR novel, though. They’re waiting for you. Go write a page today, all by yourself.

You might be surprised at what your funky, flawed, effed-up ol’ brain might be able to do.

Update on “They Also Breathe Fire”

I notice other writers posting word counts on their Substacks. I have tried similar metrics and found that, for me, it’s a meaningless metric. It’s similar to “lines of code” if you’re a developer or “emails sent” if you’re a project manager or maybe “diapers changed” if you’re a parent. My target for TABF is around 80,000 words, which is roughly where TGK landed. TGK had a large cast of characters and a few subplots so it was a complex book (by my standards) and TABF has a similar level of complexity.

I counted up all the words I’ve written so far — which include drafts and notes — and I’m already at the 80,000 word mark. Now, I often write several versions of a scene and edit and combine them, like a movie director will shoot several takes and then use the editing bay to piece together the final cut. I’m not a write one line, make it perfect, and move on kind of writer. My style is probably more like Ridley Scott as a director. He likes to map out his entire movie and even draws little cartoon scenes to show blocking and camera angles. I like to write an outline and figure out all the plot points and character motivations. I like to have a lot of raw material to work with, like different phrasings of dialog, different actions during a scene, descriptions, that kind of thing. Then I start stripping away what’s not needed and keep the best stuff. I get a lot of happy accidents this way and it gives my characters room to develop organically.

Anyway… I’ve found that counting scenes and their status is better for me. I work on scenes as separate files. I use the Tag feature on my computer to apply different tags to each scene. Then, when I sit down for a writing session at 2 a.m., I can open up the folder that holds all the scenes and quickly see the status of each one.

Currently, TABF has 58 scenes. Here’s the status:

• Not started (14 scenes): The first stage. I have created character notes, scene notes, motif and other notes, and a general outline for the book but I haven’t actually done anything specific for this scene.

• Brainstorming (13 scenes): The second stage. I’ve created the scene file and I’m just noodling ideas, snippets of dialog, descriptions, actions, and other stuff that I want or need to have happen in the scene.

• Outlining (16 scenes): Here’s where I map out the flow of the scene and the logical actions (Riley does this, Ben does that, Riley calls Ben a dumbass)

• Drafting (15 scenes): Here’s where I settle down and start filling out the scene based on the brainstorming and outlining. I’ll write many versions of elements in the drafting stage.

• First Draft (3 scenes): Here’s where I feel like I have a complete draft that is pretty close to what I was hoping would happen in the scene.

Each of these five stages are only rough indicators of where the scene is developmentally and isn’t really meant to imply that I have some kind of linear writing process.

Aside from raw numbers, the book itself is moving slowly. The book is part of a series and I’m making some changes to the book, and the series, based on feedback from readers and who my audience is vs. who I thought they would be. These changes have brought extra challenges to me as a writer. I’ve also had extra challenges around life and career.

I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ll just say a few things:

• They Also Breathe Fire occurs about 8 months after the events in The Good Killers so there is continuity with the first book. The returning characters have had time to process some of the events that happened and have begun to deal with the consequences. It’s also summer, so expect a lot of sweating.

• Some key characters from TGK appear in TABF. But there are new antagonists that are the focus of this book, along with other new characters.

• TABF reveals a bit more about the secretive criminal organization, headed by the mysterious character “Dubs,” which appeared in TGK.

• TABF is also set in western New York in the fictional Iroquois County and fictionalized versions of Rochester and other towns and cities. There are new settings compared to TGK.

• You’re going to see a lot more of fan-favorite character Riley.

The MVP for this book is my Logi Wave Keys keyboard. After 30+ years of typing for work and hobbies, carpal tunnel issues are beginning to creep in.

I’m hoping to get the book out this year… Let’s see how this goes.

How The Rookie Works as a Thriller

I’m always curious about how certain shows/serial books work, and remain popular, while others seem to fade away or get cancelled by network executives. As winter has dragged on, I’ve started watching the police drama The Rookie as a bit of visual popcorn to distract myself from pressures in my career and the stuff going on in the news (and more and more often, just down the block from where I live).

I never planned on watching the show, which has been on for six seasons, I think [Eight seasons -Ed.]. But Nathan Fillion is a dependable and likable actor, sort of a Gen-X James Garner, and he keeps popping up everywhere, so I figured I would give it a try. And, of course, fond memories of Firefly.

The show is a lot of fun and one of the things that makes it work is that the show has a mix of characters and balances out Fillion’s screen time with very capable actors whose characters have compelling story arcs. Sometimes I find myself watching more for what’s happening with one of the other characters.

Anyway, after watching several shows, what I found is that beneath its accessible, network-TV style, it quietly uses several classic thriller mechanics extremely well.

The first is how tension grows from ordinary situations. Many episodes begin with routine police work: a traffic stop, a suspicious person call, a welfare check. Structurally, this is powerful because it starts from a baseline of the kind of routine work that exists in every job. The audience knows, from watching TikTok videos about Waffle House, that routine calls can escalate, and that awareness creates tension before anything dramatic has even happened. In thriller writing, this is a useful reminder that suspense doesn’t always require elaborate setups. Often the most effective tension begins with something mundane that slowly reveals hidden danger. Like when your dog bounds into the house from outside and then you notice that he’s left a trail of bloody paw prints on your kitchen floor.

The second mechanic is linking external conflict to internal pressure. In The Rookie, the calls officers respond to often intersect with a personal insecurity or professional challenge. A rookie trying to prove competence might take a risk during a stop. A training officer might push someone harder because they sense hesitation. This ties the decisions that the characters make into consequences for both their personal life and the lives of others. That connection between inner conflict and outward action raises the stakes of every scene, because the outcome affects both the situation and the character’s sense of identity.

The show also demonstrates a useful principle of pacing: enter scenes late and leave early. Conversations rarely begin with exposition, and scenes often end just as the tension peaks or a decision is made. This keeps the narrative moving and prevents the story from explaining too much. The audience fills in the gaps, which makes the experience feel more immediate.

Finally, the series uses institutional structure as a source of tension. The training officer system means that every call has an inherent hierarchy and evaluation component. Someone is always watching, judging, or teaching. That dynamic naturally generates friction, and friction is the raw material of suspense.

Watching a show like this as a writer is a useful reminder that effective thrillers often rely less on complicated plots than on well-executed fundamentals like escalating situations, characters under pressure, attention to pacing, and a structure that constantly forces decisions. When those mechanics are working together, even a routine call can feel like it might spiral into something much bigger. It also keeps viewers/readers engaged.

That’s all I have for now… hope to have an update soon on progress with my next book, They Also Breathe Fire.

• Five titles on the market and selling—including the start of two series.

• Hundreds of books sold, on my own, as an indie author.

• New short stories and dozens of other articles written and published.

• Hundreds of followers and subscribers on Substack.

By any reasonable definition, 2025 wasn’t my year of “starting out”. And yet, it didn’t feel like a victory lap. It felt more like lining up for another race and realizing that it isn’t about showing up or even just finishing the race. It was about consistently achieving tangible results, like a racer who’s no longer satisfied to simply place and craves getting on the podium.

There were no viral moments this year. No breakout post. No sudden inflection point where everything clicked into place. What I experienced instead was a growing clarity that I’d moved past the opening moves of being an indie writer, and that what comes next requires a different approach. I had to start thinking about making my indie author work sustainable.

Being a writer encompasses a lot of different aspects. There’s the writing itself, of course, and then there’s the writing business. Up to the end of 2025, I’ve invested a lot of time in the writing. But the part about existing as an author is tough, too, and involves making tough choices, if I want to continue writing novels (and believe me, that’s what I want to do).

As a result, I’ve made two key changes:

1. First, I chose to take on a more complex novel, one which is challenging me structurally, emotionally, and technically. Not because complexity is a virtue in itself, but because the characters demanded it. And I strongly believe that this story has the type of depth is what you, my readers, want to see.

2. Second, I began shifting my business model away from serials and back toward novels as the core unit of work. Serials were useful. They were an opening move: a way to write in public, to experiment, to learn about you and what you like. But novels are the foundation and future of my indie career.

When I started here, Substack felt like a possible income stream, a platform to optimize, something that needed to justify itself in spreadsheets and projections. At the end of 2025, however, after exhausting myself chasing too many things, that idea died quickly, and alone, in a back alley of the big city of self-publishing.

In 2026 and beyond, Substack (and Medium, and other platforms I use) are no longer the center of my writing work. They still matter, of course, as places to connect with you about my books and a way to share what I’m thinking about craft, and process, and to generate interest in my characters and stories.

What I learned in 2025 is that stepping back from socials freed my creative energy to focus on my novels. And for me, that’s where my real work lies. I can’t compete as an influencer and I don’t have any interest in trying. My real audience are you readers who follow characters across years, not posts across moments.

So for you, what this means is simply this:

• 99% of my creative energy on books.

• 1% of my creative energy on social media.

You’ve shown, through your reviews and likes and purchases, that you want to see my characters and stories, and not my “takes” on different issues. In 2026, my focus is on finishing the next book after The Good Killers, releasing a new anthology, and getting started on the next books in both the Terry Perez series and the Ben Rossi / Riley Lopez series.

That’s what I’m looking forward to... and I hope you are, too.

You’ve done all the work you need to prepare.

And yet…

you’re not writing.

Do you recognize any of these red flags? Although I’ve put them into the context of writing, really any creative activity would fit (painting, etc.)

1. Writing is always the last thing you do, after all your other commitments, responsibilities, and activities.

2. You feel a twinge of shame when you say you want to write… instead of doing “something productive.”

3. You sit down to write… and immediately feel the urge to fold laundry, unload the dishwasher, or tick off another item on your to-do list.

4. You put a few words down and check your messages just in case someone needs you.

5. An entire week goes by and you’ve thought about writing… but you haven’t actually written anything.

6. You’re interrupted while writing by some minor thing and you feel relieved instead of frustrated.

Do you recognize yourself in any of these?

If so, then congratulations! You’re one of those “lucky” creative people who feel guilty about spending time on their creative activities.

The interesting thing about creative guilt is that you might actually be making progress on a project, but that progress is haphazard and crammed in the margins of your life. It happens after everyone in your family has gone to bed, for example. Simply put, you have the desire to write, but the space to write isn’t there.

Feeling guilty about your creative work is really common. If you’re a normal adult, or maybe you’re like the rest of us and have something seriously wrong with you, then you’re balancing a lot of responsibilities. Each of these responsibilities is often, realistically, urgent and non-negotiable. Your family needs to have dinner. Your car needs an oil change. Your boss needs you to show up on time.

If you’re one of those people who feel guilt related to their creativity, you’re not alone. I feel this, too! Over the next few postings, I’m going to be tackling this topic in an effort to get myself and my writing back on track. I’ll be looking at ways to reframe this perception of creative work and examine some strategies and tricks to get back into a consistent writing groove.

I’d love to hear from you—what’s your experience with creative guilt? Drop a comment below, and if this resonates, sign up for a free subscription so you don’t miss the next installment.

Updates

Anyway… It’s been about a month since my last update so here’s the latest on the sequel to The Good Killers: They Also Breathe Fire.

Last month, I mentioned that my focus will on finishing Act I in draft form and then moving steadily into Act II. I wanted each scene in Act I to feel stable enough that it can support the weight of what comes later. As it happened, I did make progress with Act I, but also made some progress with Act II.

In the past month, the central antagonist has come into focus and I have a good sense of that person’s backstory and personality. The amount of planning and research into this character has led to a spinoff short story that I’ll develop as time permits.

Milestones

MFS hit two big milestones this month: First, there are 200 subscribers! I’m also happy to say that I’ve sold over 300 books! I’m sharing this with you because none of that would be possible without your support! I have no plan or strategy to increase my sub/follower count and I do appreciate that people are hanging in there with me on this adventure. MFS subscribers are located across 34 states and 24 countries, according to my stats page, so I think that’s pretty exciting too.

Some other fun stats: My books are doing very well in the UK and Germany. In Germany, The Good Killers recently hit #48 in the Heist Thrillers category. Amazing! Or should I say, Wunderbar! I’m glad to be able to reach readers across the world and I hope that my books have entertained you and maybe even distracted you from your troubles for a little while.

I hope everyone enjoyed their summer! When I last posted, I shared that I had a minor motorcycle accident that has been slow to heal. I’m about 90% back to normal, thanks to 6 weeks of physical therapy and daily yoga & PT practice. Progress continues… slowly…

Until next time….

They Also Breathe Fire is the sequel to the first book in the Ben Rossi/Riley Lopez series, The Good Killers.

If you recall from last month’s update, I made a significant mental leap when I realized, and accepted, that this book is about Riley Lopez.

So for the past few months, I’ve had everyone’s favorite tall, intimidating, and surprisingly socially awkward deputy taking up space in my head. Which has been interesting. She’s intelligent, she’s literate, she’s snarky, and unlike a lot of her contemporaries in mystery fiction, she really enjoys being a cop. I’ve enjoyed exploring her history and exploring other aspects of her personality, which come into play in the book. Her approach to problems is also different from other characters I’ve created, so that’s a refreshing challenge.

If you’re a fan of the Ben Rossi character, don’t worry, he’s still a key part of the story!

Other characters have also come into being: antagonists, victims, suspects, and more.

As someone somewhere must have said, writing a novel feels less like building a house and more like living in one while the walls are still going up. That’s where I am with They Also Breathe Fire right now: drafting one scene while rearranging the blueprints for another, learning what holds together and what needs to be torn down. I have about a third of the planned 60 scenes drafted.

This month, the work has centered on two big pieces of infrastructure: the Scene Tracker and the Story Bible. These are the scaffolding that let me move through the story without losing track of the emotional threads. Every scene is mapped, tagged by point of view, and linked to the ones before and after it. Each entry carries notes on its purpose—whether it’s meant to advance the investigation, deepen a relationship, or plant a seed that will bloom much later.

I’m going through all this trouble because I have to balance a career and family, and other interests like martial arts, and I can’t “pants” my way through writing anymore. I need the structure to stay on track. If I’m lucky, I get half an hour in a parking lot to actually write. If it’s a more typical day, then I’m probably dictating into Voice Memos on Apple Watch while I wait for a stoplight to change. I’ve developed a complete workflow for this novel that I’ll detail later for all the writers out there.

The Scene Tracker now covers all three acts, with Act I the most developed. Some scenes are still flagged as “brainstorming,” others have advanced to “in progress” or “revised.” That labeling scheme in the Scene Tracker helps me to see what I need to work on next.

The Story Bible is also evolving. It’s the central document where I capture not just the plot, but the deeper architecture: characters’ motivations, secrets, fears, and the recurring motifs that stitch the whole thing together. I got the idea from reading about Ridley Scott and how he develops films. Over the past few weeks, I’ve clarified some of those emotional through-lines, especially the ways characters mirror one another. It’s helping me keep the focus on emotional resonance rather than just plot mechanics.

Another aspect of the book that’s come into sharper focus are musical motifs. Music has always been part of my writing process, but here it’s become an organizing principle. I’m attempting to incorporate snippets of lyrics, or examples of songs, into the book. Each song connects to a character’s inner state, sometimes in ways the characters themselves don’t recognize. I’m hoping it’s a useful way of making sure the emotional heartbeat of the story stays audible, even when the characters can’t quite articulate what they’re feeling.

Process-wise, I’ve also been refining the Scene Notes template. Each scene draft now includes not just what happens, but why it matters emotionally, what conflict is at play, and where it connects to the larger arc. Keeping track of a simple question, specifically, “what does the character feel at the start and at the end?” has been invaluable for keeping the story grounded in emotion rather than drifting into situations where I kill the same character twice, for example.

Looking ahead, my focus is on finishing Act I in draft form and then moving steadily into Act II. I want each scene in Act I to feel stable enough that it can support the weight of what comes later. I’ve drafted key scenes from Act II and III so now I need to focus on introducing the characters in Act I. Now that I have the plot set up, I can focus on the characters themselves and let them organically develop their own mannerisms and rhythms of speech.

The amount of research I’ve done since January has been overwhelming for me but necessary. They Also Breathe Fire is the most complex and difficult story I’ve written so far. But it’s starting to feel like a novel now and taking on a life of its own. I love the part of writing when a character replies to a question or problem with something that arises naturally out of their background and personality.

I hope everyone is having a good summer, otherwise. I had a minor motorcycle accident that has been slow to heal but I’m about 80% back to normal.

Until next time….

They Also Breathe Fire: this is the sequel to the first book in the Ben Rossi/Riley Lopez series, The Good Killers.

This book has been really kicking my butt. I’ve been struggling for months with the characters and the plot.

Finally, in early July, the book snapped into focus.

Because I realized the book isn’t about Ben Rossi.

This one is about Riley Lopez.

So, on the positive side, the plot really came together at that point. By defining the story on Riley’s terms, the choice of antagonist also became more easily defined. The themes of the book also fell into place.

I’m not sure, exactly, why this happened. All my planning up to this point was to have Ben Rossi continue as the lead from The Good Killers. But the more I’ve worked on the sequel, the more I realize it’s her story and she has the most to lose if she fails, and the most to gain if she succeeds.

It’s been a tremendous challenge writing a female protagonist and I’ve been leaning heavily on the many women in my life for advice and information regarding everything from hairstyle choices to emotional reactions and motivations.

Speaking of that, my research load has basically doubled, and I’ve been leaning on some of the new AI tools to speed up the research process. Since Riley is a cop, They Also Breathe Fire includes many details of police procedure and internal police department politics. I mean to say, I can handle the larger topics, but there are a ton of details that go into a novel and they all need to be researched. For example, I was able to learn just what I needed about police radio frequency interoperability in less than 20 minutes and use that to add some color to a scene. Ordinarily, I would have had to go down many internet rabbit holes to find that information.

Additionally, I’ve been able to use image generation tools to create what I call “visual character references” such as the image of Riley used in this article. While these are imperfect AI generated images, and frankly I don’t care if they’re not photo-realistic, they allow me to see how a character reacts in a space. For example, writing Ben Rossi is easy, because I’m a guy. I don’t need to think much about how Ben interacts with the space around him: how he stands, how he moves. Riley, however, is a woman. And beyond that, she’s a tall woman. Creating a visual character reference for Riley, and placing her in different situations, allows me to portray her more accurately on the page. It also saves me from a lot of awkward conversations with women that start out with “How tall are you?”

Riley is also a fun and interesting character to write. She’s intelligent, she’s literate, she’s snarky, and unlike a lot of her contemporaries in mystery fiction, she really enjoys being a cop. I’ve also enjoyed getting into her backstory and exploring other aspects of her personality, which come into play in the book. Her approach to problems is also different from other characters I’ve created, so that’s a refreshing challenge.

While this book includes a murder mystery, the main focus is still on the thriller side of the genre. Now, however, I’ve branched out to include a romantic subplot. We also learn more about the shadowy syndicate that appears to be driving organize crime throughout upstate and western New York State, and across the border into Canada.

If you’re a fan of the Ben Rossi character, don’t worry, he’s still in the book.

I’ve mentioned in other updates that the majority of my readers seem to be women (and people who identify as women), which tracks with men actually being in the minority of readers for the mystery/thriller genre. I hope that Riley is received well by that part of my readership and that I’ve done her justice as a character.

Wrapping this up, then, I have the plot and characters established for this book, and I’m beginning to write out all the individual scenes. Currently, there are 60 scenes spread out across three acts. I’m aiming for about 15-20 chapters and a total word count of around 90K, or about the same length and complexity as The Good Killers. We’ll see how this turns out.

I hope everyone is having a good summer!

They Also Breathe Fire: this is the sequel to the first book in the Ben Rossi series, The Good Killers. I've been struggling with the plot of this book quite a bit. Quite a bit more than I expected, actually. This book is an adaptation of the first Ben Rossi story. I wrote that original version back in the 1990s before I’d decided to focus on writing mystery and thriller fiction. As it happens, They Also Breathe Fire is the second serious piece of fiction that I've written. The first one is the original story behind what became my second novel (and first novel in the Terry Perez series), My Favorite Suspects.

The original version of the story is a novella that is more of a literary fiction piece than a mystery or thriller. Going back to it now, my goal is to make it a bit more of a traditional murder mystery and with the thriller elements that held together The Good Killers and strip away all of the literary elements. With another goal of bumping it out to a full-length novel, I need to add extra characters, and it also gives me some freedom to explore the backstory of Ben Rossi and his partner Riley Lopez.

So, in the original version of They Also Breathe Fire, which also isn’t the original title, there is actually a murder that occurs and Rossi is pulled into attempting to solve the true reason and mystery behind that murder. (Looking back now I can see why no one in the local literary scene really looked at it as a literary story, but at the time I thought I was being edgy and cool.)

Of course, in the meantime, I've written an entire novel, novelette, and short story set in the universe that I created for Ben Rossi so I need to integrate this old novella with that universe. For example, in the original version of the story, cell phones as we know them don't exist. Other things that don't exist in the original story include ridesharing, large language models, social media, drones, Starbucks, that barista at Starbucks that you think is cute, the International Space Station, Covid, public wi-fi, coverage for pre-existing conditions, the International Combat Hapkido Federation (ICHF), 9/11, John Wick, entry-level fuel injected motorcycles, and several forensic techniques that were developed, and later discarded, due to those techniques being inadmissible in court or not based on solid science.

It’s safe to assume that there are some updating of plot points that must be made. I've also added several characters and fleshed out many of the secondary characters to give that full mystery/thriller experience.

This type of activity, of course brings out its own problems, such as what I found a few days ago, as I was going through my plot worksheet, I discovered that I killed off a character, then had her perform some important plot-related activity, and then had a different character kill her later.

Hopefully, I'll get that all sorted out before I publish it.

New anthology: If you've been following MFS for the past few years, you know that I've published some work here and some novelettes on Amazon. I've also been working on some story ideas behind the scenes as I develop material for books in the Ben Rossi and Terry Perez series. One outcome of this activity is the short story I published recently on MFS called Something Like A Criminal which is sat in the Ben Rossi universe, and features a popular character from The Good Killers.

What I've decided to do is to write another short story and then package two novels and several short stories, and maybe one or two pieces of short fiction, as my first anthology and get that up on Amazon. The anthology is something that I see as showcasing the different types of writing that I can do and provide an outlet for stories that aren’t directly related to my two main series. It will have a traditional contemporary thriller, a more literary noir story, a character-driven contemporary noir story, and a cozy. This new anthology doesn’t have a working title yet. Hopefully it will do well and that will give me another outlet for short fiction.

Last week, I finally got around to starting that final short story for the anthology. It’s a cozy style murder mystery, which is something I have attempted, but haven't really been able to bring a completion and I think it'll be a nice little addition to that anthology.

Nonfiction: The very first book that I published as an indie author is actually a nonfiction book on the topic of Security Issues Of Personal Medical Devices (which also conveniently happens to be the title of the book.) This book came out in 2023 and made a bit of a splash, mostly because no one had written a book on this topic and it's a very niche kind of subject, so that niche was quite interested. I wound up talking about the book on a podcast, which was a cool experience.

This book is directly related to the type of work that I do professionally in my day career. Fast forward to 2025, and now, like everyone else, I have to take into account the sudden burst of development in artificial intelligence. AI has also affected the world of personal medical devices and so I need to update my book with a few new chapters, update some of the sections on the latest research, and also update the sections related to regulations related to privacy law and the development of medical devices in the United States.

So that's all the updates for now. There have been significant developments in my personal life and professional life that have caused me to pause a lot of my writing activity. For example, I had originally planned to be done with the first draft of They Also Breathe Fire by now. I'm not. But we keep moving on anyway. It's also the second anniversary of MFS and I was planning on doing something about that, but I don't think anybody's really interested in the fact that it's the second anniversary of a SubStack? I mean, it's not like I'm teaching our nation's children to read.

So on we go. I hope you are having a nice pleasant and dry summer.

In the previous chapter, Frankie took revenge on her snitch.

Looking for another chapter? Click here for the list of other chapters.

I spent about six hours in a holding cell. True to his word, Officer Dad Vibe let me go, unable to find charges worth keeping me for. He gave me a flyer for the suicide hotline and his business card and told me I could call him any time I needed “to just talk.”

I sat in a coffee shop, recharged my phone, reached out to my friends. My real friends.

I sure as hell wasn’t going back to Parker’s house.

This time, Shay responded to my texts first.

She picked me up and took me back to her place.

I borrowed Shay’s computer, logged into the virtual lab I’d been using, got the package ready for Mr. Allcaps, and uploaded it to the repository of his choice. Money appeared in my bitcoin wallet, so I checked that off as another need met.

He went silent.

Shay reached out to her attorney about the search warrant and getting my stuff back.

I had a shower and was drying my hair when Shay came in with a text on her phone from one of her buddies, a trauma nurse at Rochester General.

I didn’t believe the text. I got online and check the news and the community forums on Facebook and other sources. Shay’s friend offered more details that I couldn’t deny.

The short version was that the cops had gone to Megapony’s house late last night, while I sat in holding. I imagined the cops showing up in their unmarked cars and their black polo shirts. I imagined Tony doing something stupid and the cops lighting him up. I imagined more cops, afterward, finding his stash from the jewel store job.

At least I’d learned what had set Tony on edge.

Problem was, Trace had been home, too. Maybe she still wasn’t feeling well and had called in sick. Maybe she’d decided to keep her boyfriend company.

Shay’s hospital buddy said that Trace never made it to Emergency. A bullet fragment hit her, bam, left side of her head. Coded out in the ambulance on the way to General.

I spent a long time on the floor of Shay’s bathroom, crying myself into a migraine, wondering how I would get through the rest of my life without Trace.

Anyway.

It’s been a year, now.

The bullet fragment that ended Trace’s life, being a fragment, could’ve come from a cop’s gun or from Tony’s. Nobody can say for sure. Since Tony had also died, nobody seemed to look very hard for an answer to that question.

As far as I’m concerned, what happened to Trace is on Parker, not on me. Parker set it all in motion. She didn’t leave me with any choice.

Some people say you gotta keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I don’t play that game. I can track anyone I want through computers and networks and phones. You could be on the fucking Moon and I’ll still track you.

I’ve been keeping tabs on Parker. She thinks she’s out of my life. She thinks I don’t know what she did.

All I gotta do is be patient. She can’t hide behind her little girl forever. Parker’s kid is gonna get to an age where she can handle herself. And at that point… well…

Eventually, everyone becomes an adult, with or without parents around.

Look at me, for example. I’m an orphan. And I turned out just fine.

SOMETHING LIKE A CRIMINAL by Todd Brasel

Production

Story composed in Scrivener 3 for MacOS and Apple Notes.

Soundtrack

“Every Time the Sun Comes Up” by Sharon Van Etten (listen on YouTube)

Images

Artificial base image created with Midjourney and modified with Canva.

Without Whom

Special thanks to Gayla for support, beta reading, and feedback.

In the previous chapter, Frankie discovered the identity of the snitch.

Looking for another chapter? Click here for the list of other chapters.

I think being on a bike helped me evade the cops. The cops were looking for a woman in a van, a van that’s clearly labeled with the name of said woman’s business. (That woman is me, in case you forgot.) However, I knew eventually my luck would run out. Having red hair, and being reasonably attractive, I was bound to get picked up at some point.

I’d hoped I could at least make it to a motel and get some sleep. The best I did was make it to the bus stop. I noticed, too late, a cop car at the nearest intersection. Unlike the other cop cars that had been following me around, this one was clearly marked with the RPD logo. The cop had set up for a left turn, saw me, turned on the lights, and cut across traffic to pick me up.

I thought back to the advice I’d given Parker’s little kid. It basically held true for adults, too: Keep your mouth shut. Don’t run. Don’t resist. And above all, don’t hit them, no matter how much they smile their smug cop smiles.

The cop crammed his hands into a pair of blue nitrile gloves and gave me a pat-down. Trace once told me that you can tell a lot about a cop by the pat-down technique. If that’s true, then I would call this guy efficient and I’m not sure what else. He was oddly reluctant to hit certain areas, the places other cops usually didn’t have any problem touching.

Afterward, as instructed, I squeezed into the back seat of the cop car.

That wire screen is real close to the back seat, by the way. I had to spread my legs uncomfortably, and I’m not even that tall. I had on cuffs, so my hands were jammed into the small of my back. At least he kept the engine running and the AC pumped out sweet cold air.

He dumped the contents of my bag on the hood of his car and picked through them. He looked, puzzled, at the crayons, markers, hair clips, and other “helpful” items that Parker’s daughter had added to my stuff. He took photos of the contents.

He threw my pack onto the passenger’s seat, then got in, or more accurately fell onto the driver’s seat, and slammed the driver’s door behind him. Without a word, he did cop stuff on his cop computer and cop phone and absently scratched his cop armpit.

I decided to make the first move and try to set the tone for what would come next.

“Flame-retardant,” I said.

“What?” he said, without looking up from the laptop mounted between the front seats.

“Chemicals they put in the uniforms,” I said. “Makes them itchy.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sucks if you’ve got sensitive skin.” He turned partially sideways to see me better and pointed to his close-cropped hair. “As a fellow redhead, I’m sure you understand.”

“Don’t even get me started on the heat rash,” I said.

He laughed quietly and tapped a few keys. I imagined what he might be reading about me: records sealed, evidence not admissible, charges dropped. Though I mostly stayed out of trouble, there had been a few times I’d appeared before a judge. Would that appear in my record?

“OK,” he said, seemingly having found what he needed. “Do you know why we’ve been looking for you, Francesca?”

This could go a few ways, I thought. I could go silent, which would end at the station. I could get up in his face, which would also end at the station. Neither approach would get me any information about what they wanted from me. Some girls, at this point, might put themselves on the menu, as my buddy Trace would put it, but I never had the style to make it work. Parker had the style. I think she’d even dated a cop once.

I decided to play dumb and innocent. I don’t understand it myself, but there’s a game that guys like to play with me where they know I’m not dumb and innocent, but I play dumb and innocent, and we both know it’s a game, and somehow that works in my favor. I wiggled my nose in a useless attempt to scratch it and blew a stray strand of hair away from my eyes, which immediately fell back into the same spot.

“Call me Frankie,” I said.

“Frankie it is. So, do you know why we’re looking for you?”

“No clue.” Maybe this cop didn’t play the dumb-and-innocent-girl game. I decided to try pushing a different button. This would take more effort. Judging by the miles on his face, the cop was staring down forty in the mirror every morning. His wedding ring had a patina on it so he was someone who’d been married a while. Long enough to have kids, I’d assume.

“No idea at all?” he said.

I thought back to the pat-down he’d given me and the very cautious, almost respectful, way he’d done it. The guy had to be twenty years older than me, which put me in range to be his daughter’s age. And with the red hair… maybe his daughter had red hair, too?

I let out a big sigh. I focused really hard on my dad, how much I missed him since he’d passed away, the last time I saw him, stuff like that. I was going for lost and despondent and maybe went a bit too far; my eyes watered up and a few tears ran down my cheeks. “Sorry, officer,” I said quietly, sniffed, and tried to wipe my face on my shoulder. “It’s been pretty rough lately.”

“Stuff going on at home?” the cop said.

“It’s my dad.”

“Did you guys have a fight?”

“No… he’s…. He died a couple of years ago.”

That broke his concentration.

“On a business trip,” I added. “We never got to say goodbye.”

The cop thought for a while. He took the backpack from the passenger seat and went through the pockets again. The crayons, the markers, all that. “Do you have a daughter? Or are you a nanny?”

“I work as a nanny sometimes,” I lied. “That friendship bracelet. My dad gave me that. I like to keep it around because it reminds me of him.”

He picked up the friendship bracelet and turned it over in his fingers, thinking.

“Listen,” he said, packing everything back up. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but we’re working on several leads related to something big that went down a few days ago. A big job at a jewelry store. You know those places. They have all kinds of surveillance cameras and alarms. Funny thing is, whoever did the job somehow evaded all the cameras.”

“Hm.”

“We got a tip that you may be connected with that. I mean, it’s kind of interesting that you own a business that installs alarms and security systems.”

He was exaggerating. I own a van with equipment and have a few customers. It’s not like I had major contracts. Those all went away after my dad died.

I sniffed again.

“We executed a search warrant at your house earlier today. Is there anything you might want to mention? Want to talk about anything we found?”

I made a little groan, hopefully sounding pathetic, and looked up at the roof of the car to hide my reaction. That damn Parker really did a number on me by turning me in. The cops must’ve been after her for something interesting. If they were, could I blame her for narc’ing on me? Rochester is a big city for Upstate New York, but it’s not like there’s a huge criminal population. Mouse barely counted unless you needed someone to get lit and spray graffiti on your ex-boyfriend’s car. From Parker’s point of view, the obvious choices were Trace, Shay, and me. We all had records, but Trace and Shay had found decent jobs. Trace had her warehouse gig. Shay worked help desk at a hospital. That left… me.

On top of that, Parker didn’t have any family in Rochester anymore. If she got pinched, her little girl goes into Social Services.

Back to me, though. I lowered my head, facing forward again, and caught a glimpse of myself in the rear-view mirror: sweaty, matted red hair, pouting lips, cheeks wet with tears.

“Frankie, kiddo, can you get a hold of yourself for a sec?”

“I’m really trying,” I said with a bit of a whine. “It’s been so hard, you know? I don’t really get along with my mom. She’s in and out of rehab. The whole time they were married, she basically treated him like an ATM. I wish I could… could talk to him right now…”

If he was telling the truth about the search warrant, he wouldn’t have found anything right away. They’d have to do a forensic search of my computers and accounts, and they wouldn’t get results from that for weeks, if they even bothered. Unfortunately, on top of trying to finish a job for Mr. Allcaps, now I had to worry about the cops getting into my accounts. Somehow, handcuffed in the back seat of a cop car, I had to stop them.

He turned back to me, his face in profile. “Sure, Frankie. I get it. Believe it or not, I have a daughter. She’s a little younger than you, basically a sweet kid… though lately….” His voice faded. He cleared his throat. The cop tapped his fingers on the steering wheel like he was running through his own list of options. “So here’s the deal, Frankie. I can make all this go away, including your Grand Theft Bicycle,” he pointed to the bike I’d borrowed, leaning against one side of the bus stop shelter. “As a member of the redhead tribe, I’d like to extend you a little grace. How do you feel about that?”

At this point, I really had gone too far with the acting. Whatever memories I’d dragged up to set my mood refused to go back into the bag that I’d stuffed them into years ago. They hung out there, fighting for freedom like a cat, all claws and teeth. If my hands had been free, I would’ve buried my face in them. I saw my face in the mirror, my eyes puffy and red, face glistening. I felt snot running down my upper lip, sniffed hard, and tried to wipe my face on my shoulder again.

“Frankie,” he said calmly, using his dad voice, “kiddo, it’s going to be OK, if you cooperate.”

“I would really appreciate anything you could do,” I said, using my very quiet daughter voice.

“Do you know the rule of three?” he said.

I’d heard Trace mention it. Trace had a few more run-ins with the cops that I’d had at that point. I thought she’d been kidding.

“No,” I said, blinking away tears.

“I’m willing to overlook the charges, today, if you give me names of three people that are into something more interesting than what we’ve got on you.”

OK. Then that’s my way out. I made a visible effort of thinking, jiggling my leg, biting my lower lip, the whole act. I gave him three names of people I knew had recently been active. The cop ran the names through his computer. He liked two of them but balked at the third. Not good enough.

Now I had a problem. I didn’t really have anyone else. I didn’t want to hand over Mr. Allcaps because I needed the money from the job. I couldn’t hand him over anyway since I had no idea who he was or where he lived. I certainly wasn’t going to hand over Mouse, Trace, or Shay. Especially Trace, who’d been clean for a long time and had made a good run at going straight.

Parker wasn’t an option. If they pinched her, then the kid was going to wind up at Social Services. And man, you do not want to wind up there. As much as I was pissed off at Parker, I couldn’t put her little girl through what I’d been through.

Then it hit me.

“There’s a guy,” I said. “I’m not sure what his name is. It’s Tony. Tony, like Tony Megapony.”

“His name is Megapony?” the cop said, wrinkling his eyebrows.

“No, I’m saying his name rhymes with Megapony.”

He shook his head.

“Go on,” I said. “Boop your laptop there. I know you can do a search by sounds-like. At least give it a try.”

He punched the name into the computer with his index finger. I actually didn’t know if they could search phonetically. While he tapped away, I studied the various menus and screens, curious about the processor speed, network connectivity, operating system, and making mental notes for another day. After about a minute, the computer displayed a set of potential matches. He read through the list, tracing each name on the screen.

“Murgatone?” he said.

“That’s the one.”

He laughed. “I guess it does sound like Megapony. All right. What’s his deal?”

I gave him the description, told him about the gun, and let the cop fill in the blanks. “It’s gotta be something big,” I said. “Maybe even related to that jewel heist. It can’t be drugs. Trace’s kid brother OD’d and Trace has been clean as long as I’ve known her. It’s got to have something to do with the jewels.”

The little cop gears were slowly turning in his head. He sent a few texts and waited for a response. I checked the time displayed on the laptop, and I knew that Trace would be at her shift at the warehouse. Whatever went down, Megapony would be home by himself.

The cop read the responses to his texts and grunted. He put the car in gear and merged with traffic.

“Good?” I said.

“If it checks out, then it’s good,” he said.

So there you go. Like I’d said to Trace earlier, some people need to get into buildings and some need to keep people out. In this case, some people need to punish others, and some people need to escape punishment. Whatever you need, Frankie’s got you covered.

I said, “Where are we going?”

“The station. I need to put you in holding in case this doesn’t check out.”

“Can’t you just take me home?” I said, using my daughter voice again.

“Sorry, kiddo. Don’t worry though. I’ll make sure you’re comfortable. It won’t be bad.”

I could imagine the lecture I would get from Trace after this was over. I looked at it as a win, assuming I got my stuff back untouched. In the worst case, another of her useless boyfriends would wind up in prison. In the best case, it would be another nudge to help her stay out of trouble.

When I started this Substack, I fell for the hype and set up payments using the absolute minimum that Substack would allow ($5 monthly and $30 annually). In the years following, I’ve never had a paying subscriber, and I completely forgot about the payment arrangement that I’d set up.

Then something unexpected happened this year, and I got a (one) paid subscriber. This person paid for a full year.

Gulp.

I have to admit that I wasn’t prepared for a paid subscription and I got a little nervous as a result. I considered canceling it at once and giving this person a full refund, but then I thought… well… maybe the universe is telling me something. Let’s go with it.

So I went with it.

I dropped everything I was doing, including work on my latest novel, and I wrote a short story. If you’ve written a short story, you know that it takes a bit of effort. I lost sleep over it. I sweated over it. Unfortunately, my attention was divided between my life, my next book, and the story, and I think it turned out OK, but it wasn’t the best I could do.

And then I realized my mistake…

I’m a no-name author. The only thing that keeps my work alive is with people reading, sharing, and reviewing it. And by people, I mean YOU. When I limit my MFS posts to paid subscribers, I block everyone else. I prevent everyone else from reading, commenting, offering your feedback and encouragement. I have so few subscribers that limiting my work to an even tinier subset of a tiny set of people is a really bad idea for someone like me, who needs readers more than I need to be paid.

So…. I was considering what to do about this situation when my one paid subscriber basically did the best course of action: They cancelled their subscription.

The first thing I did was reach out to Substack and start the process to give this person a 100% refund for their subscription.

I have absolutely no hard feelings for this person and I hope they have no hard feelings for MFS. They were brave enough to take a chance on MFS and it didn’t work out for them. I’m extremely grateful that they gave it a try and I completely understand their situation.

So what does this mean for you?

MFS is basically the marketing side of my writing, where I connect with readers, learn what you like and don’t like, and then take that information and write stories that make you happy, or distract you from your troubles. In return, I write posts and try to keep you engaged and aware of the fact that I’m writing books.

I tried the serialized story approach and it doesn’t work for me. I can, at best, crank out a chapter every month, and your feedback showed that a month is too long between chapters.

On top of that, as a writer, I feel most comfortable in the novel format. Short stories are very hard for me to write. And poetry? Ugh, don’t even bother.

For you: I am re-affirming my commitment to keep MFS free for my current and future readers (assuming I get any).

With one caveat:

I have raised my subscription prices, so that if someone is really determined to pay for a subscription, then I will once again drop everything and write a short story, or maybe more than one. And it will be the best short story I can write because the new prices will help me to focus on that story.

I feel that it’s important to mention that I lose $2-$4 on every book that I sell. That’s right: In my current situation, with only two novels on the market, it actually makes more financial sense for me to give my books away for free. That’s life in indie publishing, where the market rewards authors that publish as many books as possible. The table stakes appear to be about 20 books before one breaks even.

Readers, please accept my deepest apologies for making this mistake. I’m learning as I go. Thank you for your patience and for hanging in there.

Cheers, all.

In the previous chapter, Frankie found a temporary hideout from the cops.

Looking for another chapter? Click here for the list of other chapters.

I rode twice past the address that Trace gave me: once at a normal speed, then around the block, and past the house again slowly. I didn’t pick out any unmarked cop cars or anything out of place.

I walked the bike into their driveway and dropped it on the lawn. Ride it like you stole it, I thought. Casually approached the front door. Trying to take in as much as possible without making it look like I was casing the place.

The porch light was on.

I rang the doorbell.

After enough time for me to turn around and check the street, a gruff male voice came from behind the door.

Crap. Not a good sign.

“It’s Frankie,” I said, forcing my voice to be calm. “I’m looking for Trace. I’m a friend.” Keeping it cool, like we were twelve years old, and I was asking if she could come out and ride bikes. Of course, when I was twelve, I was at Hillside because my parents were in the middle of their first separation, my dad spent half the year in New Orleans on business, and my mom spent her half in rehab. I also didn’t have a bike.

The gruff male voice politely asked me to leave. OK… that’s not true, but you can figure out what he said.

I took a step back, which put me on the steps. “I’m gonna call Trace.” I dialed her up on my phone. The sound of her phone chirping made it out to me through an open window upstairs.

Trace answered with a drawn-out “Sorry!”

“Can you get him to open the door?” I said. “I’m standing out here like a giant lawn gnome and there’s cops all around.” I knocked against a hard object with my foot and looked down to see an actual lawn gnome peeking from behind the base of a bushy plant. It had yellowed grass clippings stuck to its body and weatherbeaten paint.

“What’re you looking at?” I said. I kicked it over. Then I slowly pressed it into the dirt with my heel. Something about its face I didn’t like. Maybe it was that stupid smug smile, like a cop’s smile, like it knew something.

Trace yelled down to her boyfriend, who yelled back up. The sound came through the phone’s speaker on a brief delay like the echo at a baseball stadium. I gathered that the boyfriend’s name was Tony.

I took a deep breath, went back to the door, and pressed the doorbell button again.

The boyfriend suggested that I have a nice day somewhere else, possibly involving a cucumber. Not my first choice of vegetable. Not very imaginative, either.

The front door opened slightly, paused at about an inch, then closed again. Trace and Tony argued behind the door. No shouting, only words exchanged in a very serious tone.

The door opened again and revealed Trace standing there, wearing casual shorts and a floppy T-shirt, her face glistening from sweat, black hair up in a messy bun.

I stepped in and immediately figured out why she was sweating. Actually, they both were. It was about as hot inside as out on their porch.

Trace hugged me. “Sorry,” she said. “I was in the bathroom.”

“Ew. Maybe don’t hug me right after you use the toilet?”

She rolled her eyes.

Tony stepped forward. A tall guy, lean, with bushy hair, heroic beard stubble, and dark circles under his eyes. Someone who hadn’t been sleeping well. He had on loose cargo pants and an untucked short-sleeve casual shirt. I could tell he wasn’t quite convinced of my status as Friend of Trace. He was doing that thing guys do where they stand over you and try to look intimidating. The black pistol he held against his chest, the muzzle aimed casually at the wall, really brought the point home.

“Who are you?” he said, doing the growly-guy voice.

“Frankie. Hussell.”

“Hussell?”

“Yeah. As in moving fast and breaking stuff. Except spelled differently. Who—”

He cut me off. “Tony Murgatone.”

“Megapony?”

“Mur-ga-ton-e.”

I nodded thoughtfully and said, “Meg-a-pon-y.”

“That’s not funny.”

Trace interrupted. “Actually it is funny.” She put her hand gently on his arm. “Can you put that away, now?”

Megapony did not put the gun away. He held it by his side, though, which I guess was slightly less threatening.

Trace said, “Megapony’s on edge. He’s got a thing.”

“Not funny, Trace.”

“She’s an old friend, Tony. Relax.”

Megapony—all right, Tony, fine—moved the gun to his other hand and picked up a beer bottle from a small table by the door that had a bowl for keys, and a ballpoint pen without a cap, and a few coins, and a receipt, and some hair ties, and a cherry Chap Stick, and a thumb tack, and a stick of gum, and a little box of Milk Duds.

“Are you looking for something?” Trace said.

I found the pen cap behind the bowl and put it on the pen. “No,” I said. “I’m done now.”

Tony sipped his beer. He shook his head at me and wandered into the living room. In the living room, the TV was on with the sound low.

I said to Trace, “What thing are you talking about?”

“It’s a side gig,” Trace said. “You want a drink? We got beer, RC, lemonade. Got water. Gotta warn you ahead of time that nothing’s really cold ‘cause the fridge ain’t working right.”

I followed Trace into the kitchen. Tony moved to the large window that overlooked the street. The harsh lighting from the street lamps made him look like a 90’s movie bad guy.

My phone buzzed.

I’M RUNNING OUT OF PATIENCE

I stuffed the phone back in my pocket.

Trace held out a bottle of beer. I opened it and said to Trace, “He seems really on edge for a side gig.”

She lowered her voice, as we used to do when sharing secrets under the watchful eyes at OJCF. (Ontario Juvenile Correctional Facility, in case you’re not from upstate.) “He started doing it, I dunno, maybe a month ago. Maybe longer. We needed money to fix up our Subaru so Tony found this little side gig. That’s how it started. I remember. They give him stuff to hold on to and he keeps it until they need it.”

“And who’s they?”

She made a sign with her fingers.

“He’s a fence?”

“No, no, no. Tony’s just hanging onto stuff until they’re ready to pick it up. He’s like a… he’s like a holder.”

My phone buzzed. I ignored it. “He’s a fence. That’s what a fence does.” I wrinkled my eyebrows at the look on her face. “I couldn’t care less, honestly. But you should know.”

“He’s not a criminal,” Trace said.

“Right. I get it. He’s something like a criminal, though.”

“He’s not a criminal,” she said, holding up a warning finger. “He’s like you. He doesn’t steal nothing. He doesn’t hurt nobody.”

I let it drop. When Trace was into a guy, she was into him one hundred percent, until the final Ctrl-Alt-Delete. “It must be really important, anyway, whatever he’s got.”

“He didn’t tell me. But, sure, he doesn’t normally walk around the house with his gun like this. He started yesterday,” she added, anticipating my next question. “What’s going on with you? Why are you here?”

“Cops showed up at my house. Asking for me.”

“Oh my God. Is the kid OK? And Parker?”

“They’re not looking for the kid,” I said.

“You know what I mean. We all got history. Even Parker.”

“They ain’t gonna bust down my door for my history.” I glanced out in the direction of the living room, figuring if anyone were to arrive, Tony and his trusty sidearm would be the first to let us know. “At least, I don’t think they would.” I pointed to myself. “Nonviolent offender, remember?”

Trace scoffed. “Maybe you were nonviolent… but you were good at getting others to do the violent part for you.”

“I just figure out what people need and find it for them. Some people need to get into buildings and some need to keep people out. Some people need to kick ass and some need their asses kicked.”

“Which one did you do this time?”

“I didn’t do nothing. I’m working on a job, but it’s not the kind that would bring the cops.”

Trace gave me a critical look.

“It’s a side gig. Should’ve been easy money but it’s turning out to be more complex than I thought… and the client’s getting nervous.”

“Who you dealing with?”

I whispered the name.

“You didn’t…” Trace said.

I shrugged. “I got money problems. The van broke down. If I can’t use the van, I can’t get work. What am I supposed to do, schlep my tools around on a bus?”

“Girl…”

“Look, I’d love to debate my life choices, but the cops are after me and I need to know why. You’re the only place I’ve been to tonight that doesn’t have a cop car parked on the street.”

“Where else you been?”

“I went to Mouse’s place and then Shay’s. Both had cops nearby. I’m surprised they haven’t been here yet.”

“Well…”

“They’ve been here?”

“No. Not that. I’m thinking of something else. I don’t live here, right? I’m staying here with Tony for a while because of the heat. He’s got a waterbed and a window AC in his bedroom.”

“Can you check with your mom?” I said.

She thought for a moment, then took out her phone and texted. “Good idea. She lives a few houses down from me so if there’s a cop on the street, she’ll… yeah… there it is.”

I felt a little stab of jealousy that Trace could talk to her mother so easily. Her mother was the real deal. She was the difference between “mother” and “mom.”

She held up her phone so I could read her mother’s reply. “See? No cop parked there, but they’ve been driving by every half hour.”

Despite the stuffiness in her kitchen, a chill hit me.

“What’s special about this house?” Trace said. “Why haven’t the cops been here?”

“What are we missing?” I said. “We all went through Hillside, and then we went through OJCF.” Hillside was where Social Services took you when they took you away from your parents. OJCF was for offenders.

“Even Mouse?” Parker said.

“I met Mouse at OJCF after you’d gotten out.”

“That’s right.” Trace tapped her forehead. “I knew that.”

“But…” I held my beer halfway to my mouth. I didn’t want to believe my thought.

“But what?”

“You’re on the right track. One of us was at Hillside and OJCF, but not when we were there.”

Trace snapped her fingers.

“Parker?” I said, on the same brainwave. “I met her at County.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Trace said.

“It does. She was my friend first. I introduced her to you, Mouse, and Shay.”

“I don’t understand. What difference does it make, who met who first?”

I tapped out a drum solo on her kitchen table while trying to think of how to explain my thoughts. “Look,” I said finally, “Parker’s a friend, but not like you, me, Mouse, and Shay. Parker’s been through the system, but she hasn’t been through the system with us, together.” I took a long pull of beer and immediately regretted it. Lukewarm Genny Cream has a funky aftertaste. “That’s not the important thing. The important thing is that she doesn’t know about you and Tony. She doesn’t know you’re here.”

Trace glanced back and forth, replaying conversations in her head.

“Does Shay know?’ I said. “Or Mouse?”

“No.”

“Then only I know about you and Tony and I found out, like, half an hour ago. Parker must be thinking that you’re over on Westland Park right now. That’s why the cops are there, and they’re not here.” I took another mouthful from the Genny in my hand. Not that it helped. Thinking:

Parker was my housemate.

We shared a bathroom.

I’d been teaching her daughter how to pick locks.

“There’s one way we can check,” Trace said, reading my mind. “You make calls. The one that don’t answer is the one that ratted you out.”

“I called everyone… and everyone answered…. Except I didn’t call Parker. Why would I? I was there when the cops showed up.”

“Call her now.”

I took my phone out and got her number from my contacts and punched the call button with my index finger. A photo popped up on screen of me and Parker and her kid on our couch. We were smiling like sisters. I had the kid on my lap. Her ex-boyfriend took that picture.

Straight to voicemail.

I listened to her recorded voice, all chipper and innocent.

Trace took the phone from my hand and ended the call.

“That bitch,” I said.

“What’re you going to do?”

I felt tired and shaky. I didn’t trust my legs. “Can I crash here?”

We both looked at Tony, who stalked the living room, half-listening to the TV. He had his head down, deep in thought. He crossed his arms over his chest, holding a beer bottle by the neck with the fingers of his free hand. The grip of the pistol stuck out of the pocket of his cargo pants.

I said, “I’ll go.”

“Wait.” She jogged upstairs and returned a minute or so later. She pushed an envelope into my hand. “It’s cash and my bus pass. Can you get to the Super 8, maybe?”

“That’s way the hell out in Henrietta.”

Trace made a worried face and I knew she was doing her best.

“I’ll try something,” I said. “Maybe I can get to the Motel 6. I don’t know what busses are still running now.”

We went to the front door. Tony didn’t say anything or bother to turn away from the living room window.

“What are you up to tonight?” I said, checking the street through a window in the door, half-surprised to see the bike still on the lawn where I’d dropped it.

“I have a shift at the warehouse. Although… I hope my stomach doesn’t get any worse. I can’t afford another day out.”

“You’ll be fine. You’re tough.”

“Not as tough as you,” Trace said.

She gave me a hug and a peck on my cheek. It felt good to be hugged like that. Trace was only a couple of years older than me, but those years felt like decades sometimes.

“Keep your head down,” she said. “I don’t got time to visit your ass in jail.”

“Look on the bright side. Maybe they’ll send me back to OJCF. That wouldn’t be so bad. I think some of the aides would like to see you again.”

“I’m serious, Frankie.”

“Yes, mom,” I said.

I crept through sketchy alleys armed with my current weapon of choice, a Pentax 17 film camera, fully loaded with Illford HP5+ 400 ASA monochrome film and a yellow #8 filter. For my backup piece, I had a Polaroid Now+ and two cartridges of Polaroid I-type monochrome instant film.

I also scoped out some landscapes that one might, I dunno, dispose of certain articles that one wouldn’t want discovered for a long time.

Why weekends? I work full-time during the week for my career. That’s how I support my writing. I do bring a camera to work but I generally am focused on work while in the office and I don’t get many opportunities to walk around the street or stare out a window.

Why film? I’m not a hipster. I’m simply old. I grew up using film. I was trained on film. I understand film. And what the heck, I actually like film in all its finicky, fragile, flakey, low-dynamic range fickleness.

Why do this? For content.

What’s the problem? The problem is that MFS is all about the written word and not about images, video, or podcasting.

Yet, there I was, taking photos.

Because in the 21st century, you can’t simply write. Your fellow writers online are posting photos, videos, and podcasting. Your readers have grown up consuming multimedia content. Your platform practically demands that you attach images to each article.

Even if your readers say that they don’t need images, the data shows that posts with images, even bad images, get more clicks than posts that have bare words.

If you’ve been following/subscribing to MFS for a while, you know that I use AI-generated images for covers and illustrations. (I started MFS roughly at the same time generative AI really took off.) In the beginning, it was amazing. But eventually people freaked out.

Now there’s a backlash toward AI-generated images.

I get it. Most AI images are painfully, cringe-fully, obviously made by AI. They’re a huge turnoff. The models are trained on human-generated images, often without permission of the artists, and that’s a huge problem.

And honestly, I’m not a huge fan of AI generated images. I only use them out of practical need. However, to get a usable image—specifically, an image that I like—it takes a lot of work. Sometimes it takes a few days of going back and forth and tweaking an image to get it to the point where it doesn’t completely look like AI garbage. I’ve had to learn about prompting for image generation. I often will use a human-generated image as a base image, too, and alter it in subtle ways to make the image relevant.

Compared to AI images, with human-generated images is also extremely time-consuming. You have to go out and look for locations, deal with weather, lighting, people who really don’t want their picture taken, etc. Then (if you’re using film) you have to develop or have it developed. Then you have to use an image editor to tweak the final result.

In any event, the moral and legal problems presented by AI-generated images are too great right now. Going forward, for MFS, I’m making a deliberate choice to limit the use of AI-generated images to those situations in which a human-generated image will be too difficult to acquire.

Human-generated images, however, present a legal problem around sharing and re-use. So, I’ll be relying as much as possible on my own work.

Which means I’m back out on the street, stockpiling images for stories that I hope to have the time to write someday.

When, you know, I’m not out taking pictures.

At least the weather is nicer now.

In the previous chapter, Frankie began her escape and got us up to speed on her current situation. We met Mr. Allcaps. She reached out to her friends for help.

Looking for another chapter? Click here for the list of other chapters.

I left texts for Mouse, Shay, and Trace. Mouse got back to me first. She called.

“Frankie! Are you ok?” she said. “You sound out of breath.”

“I’m OK,” I said, trying to hold the phone up to talk while steering with my other hand, and barely staying upright with all the damn cracks and potholes. “I’m on a bicycle.”

“Why’re you riding a bicycle?”

“I had to… it’s not important.”

I explained the situation and Mouse said come on over.

About twenty minutes later, I made it to her street, and about the same time, I saw a cop car turning the corner. The car didn’t have any markings. I could tell from the license plate. I quickly turned to enter the parking lot of a squat, four-block apartment building and ducked around the corner of the building.

After about fifteen minutes, the cop car reappeared.

I called Mouse and let her know. She wished me luck.

I texted Shay. She called me.

“Frankie, kid, you ok?” Shay said.

“I’m OK.”

“Sounds like you dyin’.”

“I’m not dying. I’m on a bike.”

“Bike? Like a bicycle? Why you on a bicycle, girl?”

“That’s not the important thing,” I said, and gave her the rundown on my situation.

Shay said come on over.

I rode that bike as fast as I could out of the parking lot and headed west toward Shay’s place. Sweat ran down my face and I felt like my clothes were plastered to my back. I made a mental note to start exercising. Nothing extravagant. Maybe just doing a plank in the morning or some squats? I made another mental note to Google for workout ideas.

After a half hour, I made it to Shay’s street. This time, a cop car nearly caught me.

Fortunately, the cop was looking the other way. I saved it by squeezing into an alley between a nail salon and a bodega. There was a Chinese woman in the back who looked like she was going to make a fuss. I gave her a twenty and she was chill. She even gave me one of those Asian drinks with the little marble that makes the drink fizzy.

I dropped the bike over the back fence, hopped after it, and found myself in the garden of some kind of crazy Zen shrine. Nobody was around. I found a friendly dark corner.

I sipped the drink that the Chinese woman had given me. Since I screwed up with my spare clothing, I went through the other pockets of the bag to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything else. My multi-tool, travel deodorant, and cash were there, except they’d been moved to different pockets. I had to move closer to the light to see what else was in there. In the other pockets, I found a box of crayons, three bright plastic hair clips, a friendship bracelet, glitter markers, a fidget spinner, and a kid-sized pair of blue socks with white cartoon Pomeranians on them.

Clearly, Parker’s little girl was bound and determined to break my heart.

I put it all back, found the exit on the next block, booped a stone Buddha’s nose with my finger, and got rolling again.

Thinking: The cops don’t want Parker. They want me. They asked for me.

Why me?

I had to get ahead of this train wreck.

My phone buzzed.

I’M WAITING

Yeah, I get it, I thought.

Trace finally got back to me.

“What’s up, girl? Sorry I couldn’t get back to you faster. I haven’t been feeling well.”

“Trace, I got a problem.” I noticed that I was wheezing. “Need to go to ground for a while.”

“What does that mean?”

“Hide. It means hide.”

I made a wide turn, diving between two cars, and headed for her house.

“You feeling OK? Sounds like you’re running a marathon.”

“I’m on a bike.”

“A bicycle? What’d you do, hold up a day care center?”

“Look, I get it. I don’t have a normal job. My van’s in the shop so I had to get creative.”

“That’s my Frankie,” she said. “Come on over. I got your back. Oh—but I’m not at my house,” she said.

I grabbed the brake levers and the bike squealed to a stop. “Why aren’t you at your house?”

“I’ll explain when you get here.” She gave me an address.

I turned around and headed back up the block. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be any cops where Trace was, because I didn’t have any more friends.

Here are some aspects of the novel that intrigued me:

Malice uses a dual-perspective narrative, alternating between the first-person accounts of the suspect and the detective. What you get is a layered and dynamic storytelling approach, allowing the you to see the same events from different, and conflicting, viewpoints.

As I mentioned, Malice reveals the killer early on. The real mystery lies in why the murder was committed and how the deception was carried out. This inverted structure keeps the tension high and focused my attention on motive and manipulation.

The novel dives into psychological motives rather than focusing solely on action or procedural detail. Higashino creates a methodical examination of human malice, envy, and resentment.

The story’s primary detective is the opposite of the hard-boiled, dig-a-slug-outta-your-own-shoulder archetype. His background as a former schoolteacher gives him an emotional sensitivity that is key to his investigative method.

Malice plays with the idea of subjectivity in storytelling. What I mean is that what’s written, what’s remembered, and what’s fabricated are all revealed through different perspectives and filtered through the attitudes, beliefs, and emotions of the characters. Since the main suspect is a writer, the book also serves as a meta commentary on how stories are told and truths are bent.

If some, or all, of this sounds vaguely familiar to you, perhaps you’ve read Gone Girl recently, which also is a character-driven mystery that features dual motivations in a similar way to this book.

After reading, I decided to dig into the cultural aspects of the book and how these aspects may have affected my impressions of the story.

I had a brief conversation with a good friend of mine who happens to be an expert in Japanese culture and history. If you don’t have one of these friends, I recommend finding one; they’re often seen in their native environments inside aikido schools and tucked away in the humanities department of your local college or university. My friend had a few observations that helped me understand the novel.

For example, I found it unusual that the police extracted a confession so quickly. My friend says that Japanese police usually extract confessions quickly compared to US police, in part thanks to differences in culture and in part to laws regarding holding and treatment of suspects.

I also wondered about the circular nature of the narrative, which reminded me of classic cinema such as Rashomon and some other Japanese novels that I’ve read. My friend said that, at its core, the Japanese language is about establishing and negotiating the relationship between participants in a conversation. I think the effect of that can’t be translated easily and is something lost in translation to English. It is regrettably a dimension of the book that I missed. All I could really get out of it was the circular nature of the narrative in Malice, repeatedly revisiting scenes from different viewpoints, is also a byproduct of the language.

Once I understood more about how the differences in language may have changed some of the nuances of the original, I was reminded of the time I read a Spanish translation of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. In the original text, Hemingway uses the image “But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.” In the Spanish translation I had, this became “Pero ninguna de estas cicatrices era reciente. Eran tan viejas como las erosiones de un desierto sin peces.” which is a fine translation, but doesn’t hit the same way.

As a writer, I enjoy studying the mechanics of writers from other cultures and how their stories are structured. I try to incorporate any of these techniques into my writing to give the reader a unique experience. Most recently, I borrowed the multi-viewpoint technique from the movie Rashomon when writing my first thriller, The Good Killers. I used this technique to present key scenes through the points-of-view of different characters and to provide backstory without resorting to exposition. One example occurs when the antagonist breaks into the home of the protagonist, and we see the character’s home and life from the antagonist’s perspective. Later in the book, the same location is shown from the protagonist’s point of view.

I think that I will definitely try to borrow some aspects of the masterful style of Higashino for a future novel.

In the previous chapter, the police stop at Frankie’s house to “just talk.” Frankie’s housemate, Parker, delays the cops while Frankie makes her escape.

Looking for another chapter? Click here for the list of other chapters.

You’re probably wondering how I got into this situation. For starters, I’d been staying over at Parker’s place for a few months. I was short of money, my business wasn’t doing well, and, as friends, we worked out a deal on rent. My van holds all the gear I need to work. It’s like a workshop on wheels. When it broke down, I got desperate. I took on a job for a guy that everyone called “Mr. Allcaps,” for reasons that will be clear in a moment.

I should also explain why the cops might, generally, look for me. Truth is I’ve gotten into a little trouble here and there. I’ve been in juvie. They slapped labels on my file: Delinquent. Nonviolent offender. (Did I spell that right? D-E-L-whatever. Looks close enough.) But that’s all BS. I have a business. I’m legit. I mean, sure, I bend a few rules, but who doesn’t? It’s like doing 65 in a 55. You’ve got stuff to do.

The business that I run used to be my dad’s business. He taught me everything he knew about networks and hacking and security systems like surveillance cameras and wireless scanners. One day, about four years back, my dad went on a business trip to New Orleans and had an accident. As my abuela would’ve said, his lamp came back but his light didn’t.

Mom was out of the picture, so I got the business.

Dad taught me everything he knew, but, unfortunately, Dad didn’t know much about running a business. I inherited a van and a client list and also inherited debts and payments and favors owed.

So now you’re up to speed and I’m about a block from Parker’s house. I picked up a bicycle that somebody had left in their driveway. Sure, it was up close to the owner’s house, leaning against the door of their garage you could even say, but if they were really invested in bicycle ownership they wouldn’t have left it unlocked, would they? Finder’s keepers.

Sure beat walking in that heat.

Besides, I’d have it back before they noticed it was missing.

Although having hot wind blow past me didn’t feel much better.

And don’t get me started on how much the seat was chafing my butt.

I can’t ride no-handed. I ducked into a shadow that split off from the corner of a two-story brick apartment building. Opened the pack to get my work phone. And discovered that I’d forgotten to replace my change of clothes after I’d done laundry.

I thought the pack felt lighter than normal.

Fine. So we’re doing this wearing one white Nike and one orange-and-black Adidas, pink-and-white plaid dorm pants, and a stretched-out black T-shirt with the orange Tigers logo of the Rochester Institute of Technology. The shirt was leftover from a month I’d spent with a professor who didn’t have any faults (other than lying about being married). No, I wasn’t a student. I bumped into the guy at Schaller’s.

It was too hot for the hoodie. I peeled it off and stuffed into the bag.

My phone buzzed immediately after I turned it on.

Mr. Allcaps had been texting me this past week. I owed him a solution—call it a creative way to access a network. I didn’t know the details of who owned the network or where the network was. I only had the details of the equipment. I figured out the rest. Or more precisely, I was in the process of figuring out the rest when the cops came ‘round. I stopped after a block—I’d made a direction change at random, hoping to trick anyone following—and stopped for a minute to check messages:

IS IT READY YET?

That was Mr. Allcaps. The all-caps thing was overkill, in my opinion. I get it. You’re scary and you’ll cut off body parts. I’ve heard the stories. Though in my case, there was another implied threat based on the fact that I was young and thin and pretty and a redhead. That threat made my skin crawl.

At least the cops weren’t following me. I wondered how long it would take them to realize I wasn’t in the house. I hoped that Parker’s kid followed my instructions with my laptop.

I started making calls. Text messages weren’t gonna cut it. I needed to hear human voices. I needed to hear my friends.

“Something Like a Criminal” follows a young female hacker over a summer night in Rochester, NY as she figures out why the cops are chasing her and how she can escape. She also makes a decision about her friends that will change their lives forever.

The events in this story occur before those in The Good Killers.

One thing I figured out early on was that cops never want to “just talk” to you. This was the first thought that came to mind when I heard a car roll into the driveway of Parker’s house. Neither one of us was expecting anyone. Neither one of us was in trouble, so far as I knew.

I froze on the couch. Listening.

A car door opened and closed with a barely audible squeak and thump.

Parker and her daughter were sleeping in their rooms. While I worked on my laptop, I had an old movie running with the sound low on Parker’s TV. Anyone approaching the front door could see it through the gauzy window shades across the living room’s picture window, could see the splashes of blue light flickering across the ceiling. They would know someone was home. On top of that, the house we were renting had central air, but it had stopped working a week ago, so we had the windows open and fans running.

I eased the lid of my laptop closed and turned to the front door.

The doorbell chimed.

Parker stumbled out of the hallway that led to the bedrooms. A black Yeah Yeah Yeahs T-shirt hung off her shoulders, topping plaid dorm pants. A ripped pocket flapped on her thigh with each step. Strands of hair were plastered to the left side of her face by sweat and the hair on the other side made a frizzy halo. She reached up to scratch the top of her head, revealing a large hole in the armpit seam.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” she said through a yawn. Too loud.

“It’s your house,” I whispered back.

Parker peeked through the window to one side of the door.

“Cops,” she said to me, now awake and pointlessly whispering.

The cop must have heard her because a man’s muffled voice came through the door. “We’re looking for Francesca Hussell. We heard she’s been staying here.” After a beat, he added: “We just want to talk to her.”

I never really liked Francesca as a name. It was my mother’s idea. My dad called me Frankie.

Parker looked at me.

I shook my head emphatically.

The cop rapped on the door.

I pulled on my hoodie, tucked my laptop under my arm, and dashed from the couch to the hallway, heading for the bedrooms.

Parker talked through the door with the cop outside. She wanted to see the cop’s ID.

I slipped into Parker’s bedroom.

Through her bedroom window, I saw the cop outside under the harsh porch light. He was in his mid-twenties, maybe had a year or two on me. I didn’t recognize him. Not that I knew a lot of cops, but I’d run into a few. This one didn’t have a uniform. He wore a black polo shirt and black pants. He did, however, have a standard cop-issue face with a sleepy expression, like he’d just woken up from a nap. I looked more closely and barely made out the outline of a badge embroidered onto the left side of his shirt and the Rochester Police Department’s silver eagle patch on his shoulder.

I spotted the dark shapes of two cop cars in the gloom of the driveway. Both cars didn’t have obvious lights and the only markings were the subtle “ghost” markings that only showed up when your headlights hit them.

Two cars meant two cops.

So where was the other one?

I leaned way over and tried to get a better view of the driveway. I spotted the other cop, a female, standing beside one of the cars. Like her partner, she wore a black polo tucked into black pants. Unlike her partner, she held her gun at her side, a bit extreme for just talking with two twenty-something women and a child.

Which meant that nobody was watching the back.

Parker’s voice and the cop’s voice did a back-and-forth. I imagined Parker bouncing anxiously on her toes. One of her nervous habits.

I couldn’t think of a reason for them to be looking for me. I’d been staying out of trouble. Well, except for the past month. My van broke down and I needed to get it fixed. Finances had been a little tight so I had to get back in touch with my dad’s old business partners. But I wasn’t doing anything obviously illegal.

I jogged to my bedroom to get my go bag. I did the best I could with the light that spilled over from the hallway. I kept the go bag by my bed: a small black backpack with cash, change of clothes, and other gear I might need in case I had to bail. I had my work phone on a charger by my bed. It was a basic model that had the useful quality of being not traceable to any of my personal accounts. I grabbed that, too. As I slung the bag over my shoulder, I decided to leave my laptop behind. If I was caught with it on me, the cops would search it for evidence. I fished a pair of sneakers from inside my unlit closet and jammed my feet into them. And was thankful for small miracles, since I managed to get a lefty and a righty.

Where to stash the laptop?

The other bedroom door opened. Parker’s daughter came out. Kid was always a light sleeper. She looked like a six-year-old version of her mom in Hello Kitty pajamas. Same sweat-and-sleep hairstyle. She noticed me moving around in my bedroom and padded across the worn carpeting toward me.

“What’s going on, DeeDee?” the kid said. She always called me DeeDee.

“The police are outside,” I said, keeping my voice low.

“Are they looking for you?” she said, hugging herself.

“Why do you think…? OK, yeah, they’re looking for me. But only this one time.”

Out in the living room, Parker opened the front door. I heard it clunk against the chain.

“Here’s what I need you to do for your auntie, OK?” I gave her my laptop. “Go into the bathroom and lock the door. Hide this under the tub.” The bathroom had an old clawfoot tub. “Push it way under. All the way against the wall. Got it? Don’t come out until your mom tells you to. If anyone else asks for you, tell them you’re going potty.”

She nodded.

“Remember what I told you about cops?”

“Don’t talk to them.”

“Right. Except your name. You can tell them that. What else?”

“Don’t run. If they ask questions, start crying.”

“And…?”

“And don’t hit them. No matter how much I want to.”

I gave her a kiss on her forehead. In response, she hugged me. “Oh, so strong!” I said, squeezed her in return, and she basically disappeared into my arms and I hoped this wasn’t the last time I would hold that little kid. She reminded me of myself. As I remember it, I was close to her age when my parents started having trouble. In my case, however, it was my mom who was the screwup and my dad who tried to hold everything together.

She padded into the bathroom, which was across from my bedroom, flipped on the light, and closed the door. The lock clicked. Then, from the living room, I heard the hinges creak as Parker opened the front door all the way.

Time to go.

My bedroom was at the back of the house. When I’d moved in with Parker a few months earlier, she’d let me use the room. Hers was the larger bedroom toward the front, which overlooked the entrance, and she liked that. Me, I preferred to be in the back for precisely this occasion. I slipped open the window and then the screen. The night air greeted me: hot, muggy, and garbage-scented, as pleasant as dog breath.

I stepped onto the cracked concrete of the patio and followed a trail of shadows through backyards to the next block.

As I mentioned in the last update, my latest short story features a key character from The Good Killers. It’s a mystery/thriller set in Rochester, NY around 2010. In the story, a young woman is wanted by the police. She has to figure out why, and figure out how to escape, before they catch her. She also has to make a decision about her friends that will change all their lives forever.

I’ll make the first chapter of the story available to all subscribers. However, after a lot of thought and consideration, I’ve decided to make the rest of the story (about 6-8 more chapters) only available to paid subscribers. I’ve been neglecting the MFS paid subscribers for quite a while and I want to take this opportunity to thank them for their patience and generosity.

If you’re a free subscriber, you’re not out of luck! I’ll continue to publish free content to MFS this year, such as:

• book reviews,

• updates on They Also Breathe Fire and other novels in progress,

• sample scenes from work that I haven’t shared on MFS,

• posts on topics related to mystery/thriller fiction,

• and possibly another short story.

Remember that you always have several options to read paid content:

• Wait until all chapters of a story have been published on MFS, then use the paid trial subscription feature to “binge watch” all chapters for free.

• Wait until later in the year, until I have other stories posted, then do the free trial and “binge watch” all the paid content.

• Wait until later in 2025, when I plan to release an anthology of short fiction, and purchase the book (or read online).

• Subscribe! Check out the monthly and yearly subscription options—the annual subscription has a 50% discount on the monthly rate!

My goals for MFS haven’t changed: I still want to bring the highest-quality writing that I can to my subscribers, and I still want to build a community of readers who enjoy mystery/thriller fiction.

Thanks for your continued support!