"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."
—Muriel Rukeyser
____________________________

Happy New Year!

 Stunning ‘Auld Lang Syne’ from University College Dublin’s choir


Auld Lang Syne’ has long been a song performed as a new year enters, with words that capture bittersweet reflection and a spirit of goodwill. And in the video below, it’s sung so powerfully.

The poem ‘Auld Lang Syne’ captures two friends catching up over a drink or two, their friendship having been long and occasionally distant. The words were written by Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1788.

The song’s famous title translates as ‘old long since’, or ‘for the sake of old times’ – in other words, looking back, as a way to look forward.



Dr. Ken Atchity Discusses How to handle big tasks with Patrick Will

 Have a listen: Ken Atchity on WillCast Podcast Hosted by Patrick Will⁠ ⁠ 

Ken and Patrick discuss how to manage time better, what it means to be a real artist, and why The Meg took 22 years to make.⁠ ⁠ 





Author Robert Rivenbark on Born to Talk Radio with Marsha Wietecha!

 LISTEN NOW


Robert.

To begin with, Robert Rivenbark discovered he was a natural writer in the sixth grade. His homeroom and English teacher, Mrs. Lee, elected him as Program Chairman in their class elections. He became the class playwright and short story writer. He read his stories to his classmates and wrote and directed plays inspired by his favorite sci-fi and horror movies and books.

Writing is in his blood. Robert earned a master’s degree in Creative Writing from Antioch University.  As a result, of that degree, he received a full academic scholarship to study for two years in Oxford and London, based on his winning short story collection.

Robert will tell you he has a relentless work ethic. He takes writing seriously. Consequently, he adopted a “Failure is not an option” attitude.

Speculative Fiction.

What is speculative fiction? According to Robert, speculative fiction draws on science and technology, as in hard and soft science fiction.  There can be fantasy elements, too.  Therefore, the distinction between speculative, science fiction, and fantasy can merge. Whatever the setting, the stories in this genre are driven by curiosity and the possibilities of what could be. As a result, the stories have endless possibilities.  Enter, the speculative fiction novel, The Cloud, written by Robert.

The Cloud.

 

The Cloud is the first novel in The Cloud trilogy.  It’s also in development as a film or series with producer/literary manager Kenneth Atchity of Atchity Productions and Story Merchant. “When Everyone’s a Virtual Reality Slave, Who can Free the Human Soul?”

“The Cloud” is a terrifying vision of a possible future I hope we can avoid. It’s a cautionary tale with sexy, suspenseful thriller elements that will keep you turning pages, hoping for the hard-won redemption of the male and female protagonists, who face near-impossible odds.”

 

Robert’s Takeaways.

“What I hope listeners take away is that my novel The Cloud expresses their fears, anxieties, challenges, and hopes for healing and transcendence in a deeply flawed world. I’ve dramatized a possible future I hope we can avoid, based on research into what’s already happening. I hope my characters’ struggles will wildly entertain and stimulate a thoughtful, cathartic response that provokes discussion, debate, and insight.”

In Closing.

Are you curious? What happens in this Virtual Reality thriller?

 Robert’s personality is contagious and that makes him an excellent storyteller!

He is a citizen of the world.

*

#FREE December 19 - December 23! Write: Why? Marketing for Writers


A clear and concise and is a blueprint for successful marketing.



Author of Write Time (A Writer's Time), Writing Treatments That Sell, How to Publish Your Novel Dr. Kenneth Atchity joins with internet marketing guru Ridgely Goldsborough to bring you this breakthrough program for expanding your reach as a free-lance writer through communicating your WHY? instead of your HOW?

What they're saying about Why? Marketing for Writers


Straight to what's real!

There are hundreds (or thousands) of how-to books for writers, this book cuts through the chaff and get's down to what's real. Why we write, why we want to communicate. It helped me - as a writer - get down to the core of who I am, why I write, and it connected me with my deeper purpose. Best of all? It's practical and it's real - not one of the all too common airy fairy, new age, get in touch with your emotions and discover your unconscious forces. NO, this is practical, sound advice that made sense to me and helped me connect and clarify my why - Why I do the things I do, and what I am here to contribute. In short, it connected me with my true purpose, with my true calling and it gave me practical advice about sharing it effectively - so other's pay attention. As a ghost writer of 5 titles, this book has inspired me to publish under my own name. (Truthfully, I had always felt there was nothing else I could contribute). This book and the teachings it instills - showed me different!

Thank You! Ken and Ridgely


A great easy read

While this book is primarily geared toward writers, I found it to be a great blue print for anyone--regardless what industry or profession--who needs help navigating that social media slippery slope. An excellent primer for those like me who have for the most part avoided it because it seems so overwhelmingly intimidating. But so packed full of tips and strategies that I'm sure even the most social media savvy can learn something new that can be applied to their business.

Author Spotlight: A.M. Adair


The game is over, now. It's war. In the shadows you can't see the line between good and evil. When this war is over -- what side will CIA operative Elle Anderson finder herself standing on? 

Get the entire series by A.M. Adair  today and find out!⁠







Author Spotlight: April Christofferson

 

“I love the process of writing,” April Christofferson, BS’73, says in a 2007 U profile, “but I write because I’m trying to make a difference.”

The difference this Illinois native is talking about includes many of the most complex and conflicted issues of her adopted home in the American West, including wildlife and public lands management, tribal rights, and development. Most recently her passion as a writer has turned to the issue of more than 6,000 missing and endangered indigenous women in the country, many of them in the West.

This year, the reissue of the first two books of her Judge Annie Peacock Series, Alpha Female and Trapped, by Burns & Lea Booksalong with its shopping of them by publisher/agent Story Merchant for a television miniseries based on the characters’ adventures in Yellowstone National Park and beyondspeak to the enduring interest of her literary creations, characterized by deep-dive storytelling that started more than a quarter-century ago.

Growing up in Chicago, Christofferson came to love the West during summers visiting Yellowstone and her grandfather’s ranch in Wyoming, where both parents had been raised, and later her paternal grandparents’ homes in Salt Lake City and Richmond, Utah. But the road she traveled to become a successful writer is a long and winding story in itself.

In many ways, it starts with Christofferson’s maternal grandfather, Floyd “Doc” Carroll, a rodeo champion and Wyoming state veterinarian who was inducted into the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s Hall of Great Westerners in 1998. He was a stunt double for the famous movie cowboy. “My grandpa was such an influence,” says Christofferson. “I knew from when I was a little girl that I was going to live out West and be a vet.”

After receiving her undergraduate degree in biology from the U, Christofferson began a veterinary medicine program at the University of Illinois in Champaign. But after her first year, she realized she truly wanted to be back West.

“Throughout college, I worked at an animal hospital, but I was always upset—they would try not to tell me if someone was bringing in an animal to be euthanized, because I’d do anything I could to persuade them not to” if treatment were at all possible, she recounts in the alumni story by Marcia C. Dibble. “I realized I wasn’t really emotionally cut out to be a vet.”

At a book signing in Montana.

Christofferson and her husband, Steve Leach–also a Utah graduate, BS’76, communication–quickly relocated to Coeur d’Alene, where April focused her love of animals on rescuing those in need. She began a series of odd jobs waitressing, loading UPS trucks, and working as a pharmaceutical rep, while determining what else she could channel her passion into next.

A friend began nudging her toward romance writing, telling her anecdotes about others who had made the transition from completely unrelated careers.

“I thought, I don’t have a creative bone in my body, but I had just turned 40, so I sat down and wrote a scene about it—and I just got hooked that day.”

It wasn’t a straight line between getting “hooked” on writing and publishing her first novel. Inspired by her oldest sister, Christofferson attended law school at nearby Gonzaga University in Spokane, where she graduated with a JD in 1983, followed by a stint as counsel at the Seattle-based entertainment company Miramar. But she continued to write, and for her first book, After the Dance, set in the entertainment industry with which she was then intimately familiar, the underlying issue was that of a family dealing with the death of a son from AIDS.

After the novel’s release by a small publisher in 1994, Christofferson swiftly got an agent and quit Miramar to write full time. Her second book, Edgewater, introduced more thriller elements into what was essentially a romantic narrative, with a plot involving a heavily armed northern Idaho militia. After the release of her second book, she promptly signed a book deal with national publisher Forge Books.

But the impulse for biology was always in Christofferson’s peripheral vision. Just as she was finishing Edgewater, she was contacted about a short-term gig helping a biotechnology company with its contracts and other business agreements. “I had really just started writing full time, but I thought, biotech would be such a great area to get experience in; it could provide such interesting background.” Working in that environment did indeed provide new fodder and depth for her next three novels, The ProtocolClinical Trial, and Patent to Kill, all medical thrillers favorably compared by reviewers to the work of Michael Crichton and Robin Cook.

She centered the plots of the second and third of these thrillers around the abuse of indigenous peoples by unscrupulous westerners, a theme first introduced into her work in Edgewater. Then for her next book, she focused the action around another issue she had come to see as an inexcusable abuse of power: the slaughter of bison that wander outside the boundaries of Yellowstone.

Following the publication of Buffalo Medicine, she started getting gratifying feedback that helped her see that her work was making that difference she had always hoped it would. She got an email one day from a woman “telling me she’d made a donation to the Buffalo Field Campaign,” a nonprofit organization that works to protect the Yellowstone herds. “Most people didn’t know buffalo were being slaughtered, didn’t know about the issue with brucellosis,” a disease that can cause spontaneous abortions in bison and cattle, she explains.

Alpha Female, the first in the series now being shopped for television, revolves around poaching (in this case, of wolves) and addresses the threat to national parks from drilling. In addition to using her writing as a vehicle for educating readers, Christofferson currently devotes time to Footloose Montana, a grassroots nonprofit she helped found, which is dedicated to protecting all wildlife, including predator species. She presently serves on the advisory board.

The tiny out-building in Bozeman, MT where April Christofferson does her writing,

Now a resident of Bozeman, Montana, where her son  and  one of her two granddaughters live, Christofferson has a full life.  It includes   regular visits to the Blackfeet Reservation, where her daughter and other granddaughter live,  writing daily in a small but cozy outbuilding, hanging out with her kids/grand daughters and husband, and, of course, entertaining a herd of furry friends, currently featuring five cats and four dogs, including an “all heart” black lab. Always, there are animals nearby, a tribute to her original impulse to be a veterinarian, now turned to animal rescue with her husband, the executive director of an animal shelter in the town of Livingston, north of Yellowstone in the Absaroka Mountains.

Christofferson’s most recent book Grizzly Justice is about a recently fired ranger who disappears into the backcountry, hell-bent on saving a wounded grizzly bear whose fate is all but certain: euthanasia. Her current project Wolf Killer is more than timely; it feels ripped from the headlines after Montana Governor Greg Gianforte was reported to have trapped and killed a collared Yellowstone wolf who had wandered 10 miles out of the protected space of the park. (Gianforte was given a written warning for failing to take the required trapping course).

Even though she had started drafting the manuscript before the incident, the wolf, who was named “Max,” became a cause celebre. The issue of wolf hunting in Montana and the American West is classic Christofferson fodder for the kinds of stories she excels at rendering.

Generously, she attributes the beginning of those stories in part to her undergraduate years in Salt Lake City. “I’m a big fan of the University of Utah,” says Christofferson, recalling the extra semester she spent after graduation working on the University Health campus, and her senior project in biology, when she had been studying the molting of snakes.

“I was obsessed with snakes,” she says. “I had 20 of them [Coluber constrictor foxii, commonly known as “blue racers”] in an aquarium in the greenhouse. I would go up there, weigh them, record my observations.” One day when she arrived, someone had left the aquarium open, “and there I was lying on the floor of the greenhouse, trying to catch snakes, with my husband helping me,” she says with a laugh.

We will have to wait to see if that story ends up in one of her books.

 

by David Pace

This story is an excerpt and update of Marcia C. Dibble’s profile of Ms. Christofferson that appeared in the U’s Continuum, now Utah Magazine, in winter 2007-08.

NEW From Story Merchant Books: The Sava Steps by Lee Lindauer



Twenty-five years after the Srebrenica Massacre, the worst genocide in Europe since World War II, survivor Melika Žbanić encounters two vicious men from her past. Intent on revenge, her plans are derailed by disgraced FBI agent Thorne Hightower, who has personal reasons to involve himself in her affairs.

Melika escapes Hightower’s pursuit only to be kidnapped and taken somewhere in the Balkans where a grim fate looms. With the clock ticking, a persistent Hightower follows clues to her whereabouts—and by chance meets Melika’s daughter Valery, a physically impaired but gifted young woman determined to confront her own existence—and soft-spoken Victor Alvarez, whose sole purpose in life is to keep his wife alive. Amid the splendor of a desolate mountaintop 
nouveau riche hotel, they find themselves locked on an emotional collision course between brutality, and the GIFT OF LIFE.

New From The Associated Press! Revisiting Dennis Palumbo's “My Favorite Year!"

My Favorite Year,’ comic salute to TV’s golden age, hits 40



LOS ANGELES (AP) — Peter O’Toole was famed for his commanding, Oscar-nominated turns. Mark Linn-Baker was a fledgling stage actor. Richard Benjamin, who’d made a leading-man splash in “Goodbye, Columbus” and “Westworld,” had a few TV directing credits.

The sum of these unlikely parts was the zesty 1982 movie comedy “My Favorite Year,” starring O’Toole and Linn-Baker, directed by Benjamin and produced by Mel Brooks. It paid loving tribute to the original golden age of TV in the mid-20th century and the variety shows that were the “Saturday Night Live” hits of their day.

When Benjamin read the screenplay credited to Norman Steinberg and Dennis Palumbo, he immediately turned to his wife, actor Paula Prentiss.

“I hope they want me for this, because it’s just great,” Benjamin recalled saying.

The film, marking its 40th anniversary, is set in 1954 and topped by O’Toole as faded but still-glam movie idol Alan Swann, who’s appearing on “Comedy Cavalcade” only to pay off his IRS debt. Linn-Baker plays Benjy Stone, an energetic young writer tasked with keeping Swann out of trouble (read: sober) until the broadcast.

The inspirations for “My Favorite Year” included Sid Caesar, the decade’s reigning TV comedy star, and “Your Show of Shows,” the hit he topped from 1950-54 and was followed by “Caesar’s Hour.” The movie also is infused with the spirit of Errol Flynn’s swashbuckling films such as “Captain Blood,” with Swann’s “Captain from Tortuga” seen in a faux clip.

Brooks, who wrote for “Your Show of Shows” alongside another future giant of stage and screen, Neil Simon, said in his 2021 memoir “All About Me!” that the movie represented “my love letter to Sid Caesar and the early days of television, and it was also a damn good story.”

“It’s one of the three best productions about live TV that I’ve ever seen,” said David Bianculli, a TV critic for NPR’s “Fresh Air” and author of “Dictionary of Teleliteracy.” His other top picks: “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and Simon’s play “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.”

“My Favorite Year,” which is available on streaming services, had a respectable box office opening in October 1982, coming in third behind “An Officer and a Gentlemen” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.”

Give It A Read Today!


New From Story Merchant Books: id by Kevin Spark




Dr. Shelly, a brilliant psychologist, forever haunted by her father and his murderous past, is driven by the need to find out why we do the things we do? Is the concept of free will just a concept and nothing more, a construct that blinds us to a less palatable truth, that who we are is predetermined and encoded at birth? Does anyone really choose to do the bad things we do or are we just doing what comes naturally?

Shelly constructs an experiment using a sensory deprivation tank and virtual reality, allowing the darkest part of ourselves, the id, to run free. Unencumbered by morality or remorse, Shelly finds the perfect subject in Adam. A borderline psychotic born into a world of neglect and crime. Delving into the deepest pits of his subconscious, Shelly surfaces with far more than she bargained for.

Detective Hopper, responsible for Adam’s capture, remains a broken man. After suffering a breakdown due to the escalation of his own violent behavior, he is placed under the care of Dr Shelly. Encouraging him to go looking for his own redemption, Hopper becomes a pawn in her web of deception until the lines of reality are redrawn as Hopper and Adam come full circle to an explosive end.

The Hollywood Conveyor Belt

 

The Conveyor Belt

Imagine a magical conveyor belt in the sky that carries every story that’s heading for the screen. Your goal is to somehow get your story from the back of the belt, where “naked stories” lie, to the very front of the belt where fully-clothed stories are about to leap into “principal photography.”

What do the fully-clothed stories at the “stardust point” of the conveyor belt look like? At the very least, they have

  1. A perfected script that has been vetted numerous times by dozens of highly-critical technical and creative industry readers, and rewritten accordingly. It’s not unusual for a script to have gone through twenty or more revisions.
  2. A finalized (and “bonded”!) budget that has undergone even more revisions than the script.
  3. A “start date” agreed upon by all parties to the filming.
  4. A location that works for the best interests of the film.
  5. A solid legal foundation that provides contracts for everything from the “underlying rights” to the services to be provided by every member of the cast and every member of the crew.
  6. A director who understands the story enough to “enhance the flame” created by the screenwriter (who enhanced the flame the original storyteller created), and who the financers and “completion bond” executives trust to deliver a completed film.
  7. A committed cast suitable not only to the script, but also to the distributors, sales agents, and finance representatives.
  8. An international sales agent who has agreed with the producers on selling the completed film to every possible market.
  9. A “domestic distributor” who has shown interest in distributing the film in the United States and Canada.

By contrast, stories at the far end of the conveyor belt lack any or all of these elements, the farthest from stardust being, in this approximate order,

  • a “great idea for a film,”
  • a written “pitch,”
  • a book (fiction or nonfiction),
  • other source material (like a magazine article, or life rights),
  • a “treatment,”
  • a stage play, or first draft screenplay.

They aren’t ready to be filmed until they gather all the other necessary elements.

One of the nearly infinite “Catch 22s” of show business is that every story on the conveyor belt risks being leapfrogged over by a story that has more of the necessary elements. No wonder it takes forever to make a film. I recently saw a film into production that I’d been working on for twenty years. It sold to networks twice, but always got stopped along the way by “regime change” or “policy change.”

Story Merchant Books E-Book Deal: Ken's Book Recommendation!

#FREE November 28 through Decemer 2!


Fossil River by Jock Miller ⁠ 

This pedal-to-the-metal speculative thriller revolves around the discovery of a highly territorial colony of predatory dinosaurs in Alaska that has survived undetected for millions of years.

 ~ Kirkus Review⁠




11 Things I Can Tell You Are Wrong About Your Manuscript Without Reading It (Title Shamelessly Borrowed From Sue Grafton at Crimebake)


Editor's Checklist, and what to do about it:

1)You're over-using "and," especially as a sentence connector. Remove it and your work will sound much more dramatic and direct.
2)You're making em dashes wrong -- they're like this, not -- like -- this -- or any other way than -- this.
3)It's "Fred said," not "said Fred." "Said Michael," "said Jane," will make your writing sound sing-songy and biblical.
4)You're confusing "its" and "it's," and, no, it's not alright just because they're confusing. They're not: "It's" is short for "it is"; "its" is a personal pronoun, as in "the bicycle, down to its hubcaps..."
5)You're using "parent's" as a possessive plural, when it's singular. Instead, use "parents'" as in "my parents' house."
6)You're confusing "lies" and "lays" and, no, it's not alright to say, "She was laying with him on the bed." Make Fowler's Modern Usage your bedtime reading along with Strunk & White's The Elements of Style.
7)You're allowed one adverb per hundred pages. Search and destroy the others.
8)Remember to show us what's happening in your story, not tell us about it.
9)Your dialogue isn't action that moves the story forward. Root out every piece of dialogue that doesn't contribute to the forward motion of your story.
10)You overuse certain words -- you know what they are. Become aware of them, and don't allow yourself to use them more than once in 10 pages.
11)Your story doesn't really take off until page x. Remove the pages before x.

Guest Post: This Emotion by Gary Wenkle Smith

 


THIS EMOTION

 

          How do you know he is a killer?

He is the one sitting beside me.  The only person in the courtroom who is being accused of murder, who says I did it, the killings.

          I first met Dennis in West Valley Detention Center, Rancho Cucamonga, California.

Would you come into the jail with me?

          The setting is surrounded by thick concrete from the moment you enter the institution. The smell is like no other. Thirty-five hundred men and nine hundred women, their bodily excretions, their inability to engage in routine hygiene—clothing exchange is once a week, and showering perhaps twice—inadequate ventilation, even their breath from the low-grade, poor-quality food adds to the stink that is so oppressive that first time visitors are shocked by the impact of it upon their senses. I am reminded of it at once, and I unconsciously adapt, forgetting it for the moment.

The lobby is large: two sets of glass doors, two restrooms, and a multi-windowed counter, with “Official Visiting” over one window. I have called in advance and I check in at the counter, showing my driver’s license and bar card. From behind two-inch-thick glass, the Custody Assistant accepts my cards and pushes a yellow form under the metal plated drawer under the window, which I fill out and return to her. She calls the unit where I will visit, advising: “One official on the way.” Then she slides a small yellow pass along with my ID and bar card under the window to me.

I take the pass and cards and I thank her.  I walk to a steel door with thick glass and waive my yellow paper pass at the deputy sitting in a room to the left of a metal detector. There is a visitors’ window to the left of the door where civilian visitors check in, give their ID and wait for the deputies to run them before they are allowed to enter. It is not uncommon for someone to be cuffed and arrested before their visit, upon a deputy discovering they have an outstanding warrant.

The deputy pushes a switch to the right, and I hear a hissing, then the door opens into the wall, slamming in place. I walk in and pass through a metal detector. I always beep. Most deputies who know me don’t bother with a wand scan of my body. The uniformed deputy is no-nonsense, but over time and routine contact with him he has become civil. He takes my visiting slip, my ID and bar card and begins writing information on his daily log—who I am, my client and his booking number and then hands me a key on a long dirty lanyard with an oxidized brass circle-shaped piece with a hole through it, all held in place on a soldered-closed two inch ring, kept in an old hotel-type squared key box, where he puts my ID and Bar Card.

I thank him and walk out of his office into the room with the metal detector.  I stand in front of another steel door, waiting for the vacuum release to engage the hydraulics so it pulls itself into the wall with another loud banging. I step into the hallway. When the door closes behind me it slams and clangs and echoes down the walls and reminds me that I am now locked inside the jail.

I pivot left, and walk down a long polished concrete hallway. The walls are drab yellow, a low energy color. The lighting is bright fluorescent. There is a blue line with arrows pointing toward me every twenty feet directing people coming out of the institution back to another locked exit fifteen feet from the room I just left.

Arrows on the walls with large black letters point ahead, listing units 1-15, one on top of the other. When I reach a doorway, I make my way to the right around a bubble, named by inmates, which is a room with limousine black tinted glass shaped in a semi-circle. I’ve never known what goes on in there. To my right are hallways to units 11 and 12, then a bit further to units 13-15. They are long hallways, painted drab yellow with polished concrete floors.

I continue around the bubble to the left until another hallway comes into view into which I turn right. On the wall in thick black paint are arrows pointing the way to UNITS 1-10. I continue walking until I reach another doorway with another bubble. The arrows point me around the bubble to the right and the first hallway has the bold lettering: UNITS 9-10, the second hallway hold units 7 & 8. I turn down that hallway and walk 200 steps, finally reaching unit 7 on the right, unit 8 on the left. By now, I have forgotten the stench of the place.

I enter a visiting area with one wall full of glass windows and steel circular seats welded to a metal post coming out of the wall in front of each window, and telephones beside each seat with cords six inches too short so visitors have to lean down to their left to speak while visiting. The visitor must sit in the seat and wait for their friend or loved one to make it up the stairs from the room below.

The room is empty today. I can see the bubble behind the doorway into the room with the stairs. I see a man wearing orange standing outside a door the top half of which is probably unbreakable plexiglass, waiting for the door to buzz so he can open it and make his way to the stairs and up to the visiting area. To my immediate left is a wall speaker with a button. I press the button, and moments later a male voice is heard: “Yes.”

“Good morning, Official Visit for Dennis _________.”

“He’s on his way.”

“Thank you, sir.”

On the left there is a locked door. It is a steel door with a see-through window that is very thick. I insert the key and pull open the door, which is very heavy. I step in and there are two doors of the same kind on my right, behind which are visiting rooms for lawyers and other professionals.

The door I have just entered slams, the noise deafening. It is shocking to the senses each time, but I’ve become familiar with it. I enter the second room after inserting the same key, turning the lock the opposite direction of the other door. That one slams shut also as I step into the room.

The horrible stench of the unit hits me. It is much more powerful than in the lobby. It is an overpowering stench. This day it is so strong I am repulsed, wanting to walk out and away.

This room is painted a drab yellow, with unpolished concrete flooring, a pile of trash in one corner of the floor including Kleenex, visiting slips, wadded paper, even gum wrappers. There is a black mesh screen dividing my side from the inmate side. There is a concrete counter that runs under the mesh to the other side so that we can lay our documents, and elbows on it.

Through the window on the door on the inmate side, I watch Dennis climb the stairs slowly. It is obvious he is in pain as he chugs his way up. When he finally reaches the door, he waits for a deputy to press a button buzzing him into the room. He looks at me and smiles. He has a nice face. His hair is sandy brown and shaggy.

The door buzzes and he pulls it open, holding it so it doesn’t slam behind him. When he steps in, I am still standing. I tell him my name and offer my knuckles on the grating that divides us. We bump knuckles. We both sit. Trying to see his eyes I move and adjust my vision through the half inch diamond shaped openings in the mesh. We work together to get a clear view of one another.

I can smell him—his breath, his days-old perspiration clinging to his clothing that is wrinkled and frayed with the letters 3X on the thigh and front of the short-sleeved top. I silently process this sensory information.

He is weary, his eyes with deep crow’s feet, somewhat red, seemingly blurry as he arranges his body on the steel plate upon which he must sit. I know how uncomfortable it is, as I am on the same type seat. I also know that he has had spinal fusion. He is overweight by at least thirty pounds, looking bloated.

I know about the food in WVDC from personal experiences. The menu hasn’t changed in years: Frozen waffles for breakfast, frozen mystery meat sandwiches for lunch, which has an orange dye in in the meat that stains your fingers if you are able to get to the hot water dispenser to try to thaw it; and dinner might be any combination of stuff presented as food, including shriveled corn, some kind of material passed off as meat, and perhaps on a good day a squashed slice of bread.

Supplements of starch and sugar are available through commissary, including Top Ramen, ten cents in the store, a dollar twenty in jail. Milky Way bars are a dollar fifty, and coffee prices change weekly.

There are no hygiene products given, so you are either required to buy your own, or if on welfare, i.e. no money on your books, others in your car—your race—will help you out. Everyone has to shower when allowed lest they begin to stink. A resounding beating is in order for the intentionally unhygienic.   

Dennis asks me if I knew Joe, an old friend, one of the Berdoo Hells Angels. I told him I did, and tears poured from him. He said he had been praying I would somehow find my way to him. Joe had spoken of me with praise. Dennis had lived next door to him during his teen years, Joe teaching him how to use a wrench. They had remained friends, but Joe had died, and Dennis did not know who to call to get my name.

I cried with him, already believing we were meant to be together in this thing, the multiple homicide case. He heart-shot three people in his driveway in the desert in the nighttime in the middle of nowhere. He had been sitting in jail for fourteen months, his prior counsel leaving him to wait after only one visit, suggesting he could get him life, plus fifty, instead of 3 lives, plus one hundred fifty, or maybe death.

He had no hope. I felt that, too. He had been alone, unable to mourn, now crazy. Each day spent in conflict with his belief that what he had done was right, but nonetheless being caged and put on show, the accused.

He told me what happened that night, and I knew it was true. I saw it with him as he experienced it, once again, slowly padding his way across the 8 x 10 visiting cell behind the mesh that separated us.

          I could go with him because I have been taught to develop my ability to feel with others—to mirror their feelings, to change seats with them and become them, to stand behind them and express what I feel, hoping they repeat my words, confirming that I heard them. I have listened and I have felt, and often their pain is so intense I never leave them, they never leave me.

We would re-visit that night many times before trial.

I believe TLC training has opened psychic abilities to see and understand those with whom I engage, even more so when we are put together on a journey toward trial.  Listening, hearing and intuition are all central to TLC training, and I use it constantly.

          There are limitations on how we can work in the jail. Dennis could not leave; he could not afford to post the three and one half million dollars bail. I could not stand behind him, but I could mirror what he said, using his gestures, asking him how he was feeling, trying to express what I believe he was feeling, waiting for his confirmation.

It was much more difficult when our close-up vision was blurred by the mesh. It required greater focus, something I have developed over my many years of jail visits. I have been in our various custodial institutions literally thousands of times over the past forty-one years.

Some of what I have learned through Trial Lawyers College must be modified to fit the circumstances, and the person with whom I am working. Dennis was suffering from deep depression and sorrow. For him, life was over. I had to find my way into his world and develop trust so I might be able to explain my idea of how we will present our defense—that he killed those three people in self-defense. Part of the way in is to be able to love my clients. With Dennis, that was not difficult.

          Dennis and I shared who we were for seven months while our experts did their work. I grew to love him more each visit. Every week we met and discussed how he felt. Often, he was depressed, and we spent the first hour chatting about things bothering him, working our way into his private hell.

He spoke of the ghosts that visited each night, still tormenting him. How he wished he had died that night so he would never have to think about it again. Recalling his dreams in which I would magically appear and save him. A color emerging in those dreams finally becoming a blue shirt he wore as we walked out of the courtroom together to his freedom beyond the door.

While he spoke, I listened, often mirroring his body language, when appropriate, repeating what he expressed with my body and words. In time, he began to believe that I saw him, felt him, understood him, and would not abandon him.

Before me, he had told his parents to let him go, it was over, because the first lawyer assured him he could get him that deal: fifty to life instead of three life sentences plus one hundred fifty year, maybe death.

          Most frequently, we went through that night of the killings, step by step, remembering how he had felt while it was happening.

It was slow motion, a sensation I had experienced a couple of times before—once when a friend was killed as we raced down the street, him on his motorcycle, me in my Trans Am, and a car turned in front of his motorcycle. The other time I was thrown off my dirt bike.

When he spoke of the attack, I asked him to move through it slowly. I did the same, mirroring his motions on my side of the mesh. He heard the dogs barking and went out to see if it might be a coyote. I heard them also.

He walked to the corner of the driveway where the chain link fence ended before it turned the corner. I stood there with him. I saw the horror on his face when the giant with a clown mask came out of the dark and grabbed him by the shoulder.

My face filled with that fear, I felt it, the terror, the adrenaline rush as we blocked the arm and began stumbling backward across the driveway, drawing from our front left pocket our snub nose .357 five shot Smith & Wesson handgun we had been carrying day and night for the past eighteen months.

We drew the gun slowly with our left hand and were grabbed by the hair on the back of our heads. We felt the pull toward the ground and brought our gun across our chest and aimed at the body beside us and fired. The explosion deafened us, and the flash of light blinded us.

The hand let go of our hair and we watched a shadow shuffle off with a strange movement of short steps, into the darkness. We turned and two more shadows were charging us. We fired and their eyes lit up like demons. We fired again, both times the gun recoiling, the flash again blinding us, the sound more a thudding. We watched both shadows turn and shuffle off, that same strange way of moving with measured steps, into the black of the night. We saw them no more.

We stayed still, waiting, wondering whether that really happened, and if so, where had they gone? We heard our hearts beating, but no other sounds.

I asked Dennis to tell me where he was, what he was feeling. He froze in place. I froze with him and waited. Several minutes passed before he tried to leave the cell. When he tried to pull it open, I knew he was going into his house to call 911. I asked again. “Dennis, where are you?” He slowly turned and looked at me.

He said: “I’m here now.”

“I went there with you,” I told him.

“I know.”

We knew we were ready for trial when we had been through it all several times.

We worked on the terror he felt as each day began. They were asleep, finally, having thrown trash into his yard the night before. They stayed up into the wee hours, talking loudly, several of them, leaning on the fence each night, calling his name, waking him. So, he built the wall.

It took months of digging holes large enough to put railroad ties in, tamping the sand to keep them in place. Each day ended in physical agony. He showed me how hard he worked, digging, bending, lifting, shoveling, and tamping. Finishing by mid-morning before the creatures came out and started with their threats.

The first threat came before the wall. Adam walked to the fence while Dennis worked on the ground beneath it. He leaned on the fence, Dennis’ fence, his huge arms bulging, and said: “I’m here to evict some people.”

Dennis tensed. He had seen Adam. He was an unusually large man, and now Dennis knew he was mean and had ill will toward him.

“How did you feel?”

“Scared. I asked him ‘oh really, who?’ and he said I’d find out. I told him I was a Boy Scout.”

“What did you mean?”

“I’d be ready.”

Several months passed before Dennis made it out of the desolation of despair and was ready to communicate, to share, to be challenged in front of a jury.

 

*             *                   *                   *             *

 

We set the case for trial.

I have spent a good deal of time training in voir dire. Selecting a jury to hear a triple homicide case was exciting.

I begin with the presumption of innocence. I share that most people, myself included, don’t really presume people innocent, that we always think the worst, that when I see a person sitting where the defendant sits and I wonder what they did. “Who else feels that way?”

It always gets a good conversation going, and that is what I want, a conversation. Just a bunch of good folks having a talk about the law, and the idea of killing and how they felt about those things, I show them mine, they show me theirs. It works.

Few of us admit to a willingness to let others take our lives. I’ve spoken with a couple of people who said they would never kill, not even for loved ones. I thanked them for their honesty. It takes days to pick a jury in a murder trial, and judges usually don’t rush the process.

We have to be comfortable in our own skin to stand and engage people about their beliefs, embracing each word they offer, thanking them as we go, speaking directly to them as though there were no one else in the room.

Cross-examination is probably my favorite activity in life. The state of ecstasy lasts longer than any other—it goes on and on. The lead detective, a Sergeant by the time of trial, wrote a report that was vague, but between the lines I knew he was trying to tell the truth. When he entered the courtroom that first day after Opening Statements, in uniform, ready to testify, I approached him.

“Sergeant, I’m Gary Smith. I represent Dennis. I’ve spoken with a lot of people about you.”

“You investigated me?”

“Yes, and they all said the same thing. Do you want to know what they said?”

“I don’t know.”

“They all said you are an honest man, and I’m counting on it.”

Most cops are good witnesses. They show up in uniform. When called they stroll to the stand, smiling at the jury. They are sworn, sit and face the jury, some offer a greeting.

Our Sergeant was subdued. He did not look at the jury during direct. On cross, he engaged me, and I took him back to that night, what he saw when he arrived. The jury could see and feel there was something between us.

The Sergeant answered all my questions truthfully, which did not help the prosecution, including that it was obvious the shootings took place on Dennis’ driveway.

The allegation was that Dennis had laid in wait—ambushing the three deceased, them dropping to the ground where they were shot, in the dirt road in front of his house—was slowly dispelled by the prosecution witness, the case agent.

I knew a lot about the only eyewitness. Part of my belief system is that I should always know more than the opposition. Some of that comes from knowing my clients. I had a good investigator, too.

Everyone lies at some point in their lives, and in criminal cases witnesses on both sides lie. Some lie because of their fears of being part of the accused. Some lie because they want the accused to be convicted, others are protecting the accused.

I knew that the eyewitness, Whitney, was a speed user. I know a lot about that drug and what it does to people. I heard it in her voice when she was being interviewed that night by one of the detectives.

I instructed my investigator how to proceed with her: bring her in, encourage her to be open, assure her you want to hear her story, thank her when she shares.

I knew she wanted to talk, and that she would be under the influence when interviewed. Speed users are not occasional users.

I knew that once she started telling, she would not be able to stop. She came back for a second video interview. Rick, my investigator, knew where to take her and she told it all.

The physical and forensic evidence confirmed Dennis’ story in every detail. I needed Whitney to give it up, confirm what I knew. At first, she was combative. A witness can only remain that way if you join them.

When I took Whitney on a journey, I did my best to show the world from her eyes, and help the jury see it, to know how she felt, to understand why she lied,  engaging her with a discussion about the events of that night.

I took her to her lies. She had forgotten that my investigator had her on video, admitting her lies, telling the truth.

I understood why she lied, and so did the jury. She went with the deceased to “fuck him up,” to “kick his ass.” They were all wigged on speed, or alcohol, Fentanyl and some pot. They were two huge men and a large woman, and Whitney was with them.

She was in the midst of the killings, and she wanted out. She knew she might be criminally liable—we all did.

She set herself anywhere from eighteen to thirty-five feet from the shootings, yet she saw it all.

It took repetitive cross to end the days of her testimony with the same story: they went there to get Dennis and he got them.

The prosecutor repeatedly took her back on re-direct to her lies, only emphasizing the magnitude of them, and I walked her through the truth, again and again.

It was somewhat cathartic for her, although her addiction did not allow much room for introspection.

I showed my empathy by repeating her words with enthusiasm. I did not mock her but pushed her to embrace the truth each time.

The prosecutor lost all respect from the jury by getting her to repeat her lies, only to be reminded of the truth.

Dennis and I never broke faith with the jury.

          The trial ran Monday through Thursday for three weeks.  I presented Dennis as a witness on the final day.

It was late evening at the jail, and the place was noisy, even upstairs in our visiting room. Men drank coffee and ate candy and other supplements purchased through commissary each week. They were jacked up and restless with nowhere to go. I could feel the tension, the edge of violence ever-present in custodial settings.

Dennis was scared about testifying. I could smell his fear, taste it. He hadn’t been allowed to shower all week because he had been transported from West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga to Victorville each morning, eating only cold cereal, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch—squashed flat and mushy, returning late at night, fed a sandwich of ice-cold mystery meat, then left to his own devices.

The smell is unique to him, but I know the sensation it invokes in me. I know the smell of fear and it is a reminder to be direct about what I am seeing, what I feel, how I know it.

We are intimate, and our relationship is based upon trust at the very core of our beings. If I were less than fully engaged, it would be a breach of trust. I was tired, but so was Dennis. His days were so much longer than mine.

We discussed his fear and went deeper to the source. We walked through that night again. I felt the terror they had instilled in him over those many months before he killed them.

I felt the agony, the depression, the relentless anxiety, the remorse, the betrayal of the government, but there was light in the hope and trust he placed in me.

Again, we practiced his time on the stand telling the story, the truth that would set him free. Moving my arm toward the jury box we have created in his cell, I asked him: “Please tell the jury, did you shoot those people?”

We had a reminder, me using my arm to direct his attention to the jury should he begin to look at me. The number one rule: the jurors are the most important people in his life.

That night, Dennis was also tired and on edge. He was angry about what the deceased made him do. He was angry that he was being prosecuted, and that people had lied about him. He resented the prosecutor promoting Whitney’s lies over and over. I let him vent.

While he did, I mirrored his body language. He knew what I was doing.

Finally, he agreed that if he showed his anger, the jury would not understand. If he showed his feelings beneath the anger—the pain he felt, they would love him. That had been our mantra throughout our work. If you bond with the jury by opening yourself to them, letting them see you in your pain, they will not hurt you.

When Dennis turned to the jury and, with each question I posed, told them what he did, he was talking to old friends, just like we had spoken together, telling the story of the case. When I asked him if he shot Adam, Angela and Robert, he said he had, and he told them why. He spoke of the endless days of threats and torment, sleeping with the gun, keeping it in his pocket, the dreams of them killing him. The attack in the dark with high winds screaming, as though the devil himself was director of the scene unfolding. He told them it was his worst nightmare. He wept, and they did too.

 When I closed, we all wanted to be able to defend our lives like Dennis did, and still have a life in the world. Dennis spoke for all of us. We all wanted to free him of his burden. We felt his pain. He was a killer, but it was necessary.

 

*             *                   *                   *             *

 

They sent us out that courtroom door, Dennis in his blue shirt.

          The jury loved Dennis, and they knew I loved him.

It all comes from this emotion.