Jack Johnson Mystery Series
The first book is set in Denver, Colorado where the idea for the story came from. I started writing book one while taking a Crime Fiction (Seminar in Literary Topics) class for my undergrad work.
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I was already a few weeks in to my last semester and my crime fiction class. We were at a friend’s house and I witnessed a conversation that became the basis of the entire first book. Which at the time was short story. For our final project, we could write a creative piece or a literary paper, either of which had to display our knowledge of the genre. Maybe it was the influence of The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep (which were the first two books we read), but I was leaning towards a hardboiled detective for my story.
So when a friend mentioned day-trading and the strangest stocks they had, I knew what the driving force behind my detective was going to be. The thing about hardboiled detectives is not their deductive reasoning (like Sherlock) but rather their need to solve the case, for various reasons. For Jack, it’s money problems. If he doesn’t solve the case, he doesn’t survive. He also drinks (Irish Coffee for efficiency’s sake), smokes, and wears a fedora. I had so much fun creating this character (and the cast that surrounds him). Yes, I definitely based these characters off people I know in real life, but no, they are not 100% like their inspiration. I took ample creative liberties.
This series is seven books long, but I will only be serializing the first six books. The 7th (and currently final) book of the series is going to be the creative thesis for my MFA, and I’m not sure when I’ll be attempting that. I’ll start serializing in 2023 (next month!) and release one book a year, wrapping up in 2028. The plan is to release the eBook and paperback of each the year after it is serialized (2024-2029).
In book one (which starts the series off in media res) Jack is an established private detective in Denver, but things are not great. Books two and three take us back to the beginning of Jack’s career during his undergraduate and master’s degrees. Books four-seven take place after the events of book one and end on a redemptive note.
Ring By Spring
After building a career in private investigation and police consultation work, Jack's stream of clients, and subsequently income, has slowed down. An officer with the Lakewood Police Department throws Jack a case that the LPD has been working on for the past two months. The day after Jack accepts the case, his client is found murdered at the original crime scene. Can Jack bring a thief and murderer to justice and salvage his career? Or will his own former ties to the mafia silence him forever?
What I’m (re)Reading While I’m Writing
The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
Gun, With Occasional Music, Jonathan Lethem
The Mike Hammer Collection, Mickey Spilane
A Unicorn Dies, Paul S. Fiddes
Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
Decoded, Mai Jia
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Michail Chabon
Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens